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The Other Realm

Overview –

Introduction -

Do you want to hack yourself?  Make yourself into something more than we are in our current state?  This could simply mean being able to run without having pain, learn a new language quickly, control your household appliances, or be as ambitious as teleportation or telepathy.  However, this is not a science fiction group, this is an "I want to be able to do X but I can't right now – this needs to change" group.  We will work together on each other's projects to lend support in our own technical domains. 

We will also be strong advocates for heterarchically collaborative individuality over hierarchically exclusive conformity to ensure that the main objective of society is living a happy, purposeful life and maximizing our long term allostatic potential.

 

To this end: Ÿ

  • We will work to reduce destructive competition and encourage productive collaboration Ÿ
  • We will bring about changes to public educational systems so that experiential learning is the default educational method and available to all who desire it at all levels of education. Ÿ
  • We will make sure that the education of highly complex topics is accessible and encouraged for those who need to learn it to achieve our goals, instead of being only available to the select few for whom it comes naturally.

Social Mission –

The goals for which The Other Realm was formed are to:

  1. Foster sustainable, cooperative education and innovation that leads to the betterment of those involved
  2. Lower the energy and complexity necessary to get a task done with the expressed or implied purpose of making room for previously unachievable tasks
  3. Promote community while encouraging individuality and uniqueness in all

These goals are to be for the purpose of directing where change is headed and using it to benefit humanity in an ever more joyful way.

Technical Missions:

  1. Improve self-deterministic abilities of individuals and society
  2. Extend abilities beyond the body
  3. Enable better and new methods of communication and consciousness
  4. Enable new forms and definitions of life

Projects:

One project that is currently under way is to make custom orthotics, that is, custom devices that enable people to walk more easily, more comfortably, and go farther faster. Stay tuned for other projects that improve our abilities further!

oShoe: the shoe that is made for you –

Have you tried to buy new shoes and been both overwhelmed by the options and underwhelmed by the selection of those that fit your needs?  There are bazillions of different kinds of shoes, but if you walk funny due to an injury, ailment, or other quirk in your gait, you may have found that none of them really meet your needs.  I know this is my case; I fell off my bike when I was in high school and ever since then have walked with a limp.  I have what is known as excess planter flexion and inversion when my right foot is in its swing phase of walking – basically, my foot goes down and turns in when I move my right leg.  To counteract this, I need a shoe that has a thin sole that is ultra-wide on the outside and a very steep sloping insole in the opposite angle as most insoles (thin on the inner edge and think on the outside edge).  They don't make this kind of shoe.  There are other people who have legs that are different heights, are very wide, are very narrow, are lacking a toe, need to look a specific way but also fit a specific purpose, or that people just want to look original and snazzy.  The Other Realm is currently developing a method of making these one-off shoe designs in a cost-effective way thanks to advancements in computer aided manufacturing and automation. 

Market –

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, around 18% of Americans have a difficulty walking.  Out of a population of more than 332,000,000, this means more than 59,760,000 potential customers in the U.S.  Assuming the demographic data on the number of Americans who suffer from walking complications can be extrapolated to the population of the rest of the world (~7,878,854,000), that means that there are over 1.4 billion potential customers.  And that is just the number of people for whom there is not adequate resources to enable people to walk normally – there are a lot of other people who would jump at the opportunity to have shoes that are uniquely their own.

According to ibisworld.com, there are 43,093 Physical Therapy Rehabilitation Centers in the U.S.A. as of the end of 2021.  If we can initially establish partnerships with 10% of these locations, that will give us over 2000 clients.  If each place sees 5000  people a year and 18% of them have gait issues of which 10% get oShoe shoes making it ~90/shoes per clinic and we get a $30 return from each shoe, this makes the revenue around $5,400,000.  Now, these actual numbers are close to meanness because so much about the future direction of oShoe and The Other Realm is still up in the air, but I feel the general breakdown of potential clients is conservative.

  By conducting a survey of potential therapists and end users, the emerging consensus is there are almost no custom shoe manufacturers (other than the few remaining conventional cobblers left in the world, that mainly focus on high end, expensive shoes) that provide a reasonable priced shoe that is custom made from the ground up for .  However, the demand for such a service is a little uncertain.  It is hypothesized that the reason some people are not chomping at the bit to get custom shoes has more to do with their unavailability and lack of awareness than the interest.  Who wouldn't want to wear custom shoes and clothing if it was similarly prices as its generic counterparts.