[brd]

"It was a little more like being barefoot than regular shoes but was way more like being in shoes than being barefooted."

I'm a big fan of VFFS (vibram five finger shoes) and I can attest that you can feel terrain changes through vibrams, this also means that you will watch where you step to avoid the occasional large rock, etc which can be extremely uncomfortable.

Barefoot shoes provide much of the positives highlighted in this article while dramatically reducing your exposure to the perils of walking barefoot, I'd recommend the author give them another chance.

[ChuckMcM]

I like the juxtaposition of these Vibram shoes as a fashion fad and the old Doc Martens boot fad (which seems about as opposite a direction as you can get, perhaps you could go all out and get steel toed but still)

My feeling is that we cut of sensory inputs as a defensive mechanism, fewer sensor inputs, more cycles to focus on our thinking. And yet when we're 'not' thinking we don't necessarily un-block those inputs. One of the engineers at NetApp was well known for walking around in socks all the time. I always attributed it to his scottish ancestry and not wanting to put excess wear on a perfectly good pair of shoes, but perhaps he was ahead of his tims in this foot thing :-)

[RobertHubert]

How about steel-toed five fingered shoes?