Rupert Goodwins' Diary

Friday 4/12/2003
Attention trendsetters! You know that what California did yesterday the US does today and we do tomorrow. So it is with great excitement that I can exclusively reveal the latest and most thrilling trend currently rampaging through Silicon Valley: knitting.

According to my highly placed spies, the company at the head of this tidal wave is that thrusting, go-ahead outfit called Macromedia. Small lunchtime knitting groups were set up by a handful of that company's female staff, but these soon attracted the attentions of the engineers. Now, they regularly meet and sit around in circles, needles slashing the air like tiny samurai knives, knitting such mannish apparatus as laptop, mobile phone and PDA covers.

We'll try and get you pictures. Meanwhile, what next for the woolly revolution? Now the engineers are involved, it's only a matter of time before they start to wire up chunks of IT to the process. Active Flash knitting patterns and scripts for resizing socks will be followed by a Lego RoboKnitter, optimal wool usage algorithms and, in the end, something risky involving just-in-time materials delivery from a flock of electric sheep corralled on the roof of their Townsend Street, San Francisco, HQ.

And then it'll spread. Before long, job interviews for system programmers will involve conversations like: "I see you've got C++, EJB, XML… but we really need Perl".