the wall. A Leatherman has a 25-year warranty. Its plier jaws can soak up 600 pounds of crushing force. The Swiss Army knife (SAK) outfit is a century-old model of socialist lifetime employment. The SAK is not a military weapon, but a force for good in the world, like the Red Cross.
However, as it becomes obvious to people that no real-life technology can ever actually “work,” multitools become the people’s friend. A certain pop decadence is setting in. Today, there are Harley-Davidson multitools that let bikers pretend to be real mechanics. Caterpillar multitools strut their stuff like bulldozers. The Gerber ProScout has a “camouflage finish.” (Hey, what use is a tool you can’t see?) The Frost Cutlery Dale Earnhardt #3 Handi-Mechanic couldn’t stop the racecar hero from meeting his own high-speed doom. The Gerber Terminator III: Rise of the Machines multitool is a movie tie-in product; it’s from a dystopic world where angry hardware kills off the puny humans.
They’re getting skinnier — with credit-card slipcases — and fatter, like the Leatherman Surge, that chromed SUV of multitools, too big to tote handily but packing enough torque to crack a Swiss Army knife like a walnut. They’re also adding on a host of extra twiddly bits — not just the removable SAK toothpick, but drill bits, screwdriver tips, chromed sockets, plus the newfangled LED flashlights and flash memory plugs. They’re appearing in flashy chrome yellow, and red, and hot pink, and with finger-friendly rubber
rental cars and malodo-
sible to design a harmless one. The Transportation
rous foreign plumbing, Safety Agency has been convinced by grim example
that anyone can use small blades to make jets
created a multipronged smash skyscrapers. Therefore, they arrest all multi-
super-interface for a tools on sight. You can buy the detainees on eBay now, in heaps, offered for resale by the government;
world of SNAFU.” these extremely personal devices, the treasured arlings of pockets, packs, and purses, stripped
away from their embarrassed owners and cynically
inlays. The multitool wars are a nail soup of product sold off in buckets-full. That’s such a shame but ... profusion, from Victorinox, Leatherman, Ka-Bar, wow! Six big Swiss Army knives for just six bucks?! Kershaw, SOG, Gerber, Seber, and now the Chinese Imagine what you could do with that! are getting into the act, with a swarming host of dirt- The more you fix, the more you get to fix. cheap fakes and downmarket workalikes! Where can it end? Every one of these things is a mobile puddle of improvisation!
Then there’s the dark side: the mischief factor. Bruce Sterling ( bruce@well.com) is a science fiction writer Since a multitool can do almost anything, it’s impos- and part-time design professor.
References:
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