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By Brian Boyko
For anyone who considers our recent data visualization experiment -- Netcosm --"just a toy," without serious purpose in a large enterprise network, I invite you to take another a look.
I've noticed something incredibly powerful and poignant when asking people what they think of Netcosm, the NetQoS experiment in 3-D network monitoring. By far, the comment most people give me is that "It kinda looks like 'Tron'" - despite the fact that, if you actually go back and look at "Tron" - Netcosm looks nothing like it. The only similarity is a conceptual one - both "Tron" and Netcosm give you the ability to "look inside the network."
But why "Tron" in particular? Why not "The Matrix," which, after all is a much more recent movie. Well, that has much to do with my sampling bias. I had been asking people in my generation - late 20-somethings and 30-somethings. And we all remember Tron from our childhood or young adulthood.
If you ask a young 20-something what Netcosm looks like, they're much more likely to say "It looks like the Matrix." And I've had one or two older Unix gurus tell me that Netcosm "looks like something out of Buck Rogers."
It should not be a surprise that we hold onto the memories of our childhoods first and most dearly.
(Continued...)
In fact, childhood and the childlike have had an amazing impact on the computer industry and related technical industries over the past few years, at least, according to sociologist Christopher Noxon, whose book, Rejuvenile, examines the emergence of a subculture - quickly becoming mainstream - of adults who enjoy pastimes (toys, games, cartoons, etc.) once considered the exclusive domain of kids.
I've just finished reading it. Here are some appropriate excerpts:
"Most [rejuveniles] are from the urban upper classes - free time and disposable income being important components in the rejuvenile lifestyle. Those in creative fields and high technology are more likely to display rejuvenile tendencies." (Emphasis mine.)
"In the early 1980s, Apple created [sic] a mouse, a desktop, and simple, cartoonlike icons that could be clicked on, dragged about, and otherwise toyed with. The actual nuts and bolts of computing were hidden behind this decorative partition, the unseen hands of code fattening up whimsical happy-face icons. Twenty years later, we take this interface for granted, but it's worth recognizing for what it is: computing as puppet show."
"The experience of using a computer turns out to be about as close as you can get to recapturing what it's like to play make-believe as a child. We check our "desktop" for "files" and "viruses" and visit online "marketplaces" and "chat rooms," quickly forgetting (if it ever occurs to us at all) that there is no actual desktop, no actual file, no walls or doors. We are completely immersed, convinced of the reality of the metaphor. Far from being instruments of cold rationality, computers encourage us to see the abstract as concrete - perhaps one reason why the ranks of the rejuvenile are so heavy with the navigators of digital space. Witness the overlap between Web designers and fans of anime; between software engineers and toy collectors; between IT geeks and Pac-Man champions. Spent time with computer coders and you'll hear schoolyard slang, see junior high fashions, and observer workspaces decorated with gel-filled ant farms, bobbleheaded dolls, and other kiddie knickknacks."
If Noxon is correct (about everything except for Apple, instead of Xerox PARC, creating the first GUI,) then examining the metaphor further, any technology that hopes to succeed and be used effectively needs to have an "aspect of play" in it. As one person in Noxon's book explains, the opposite of work is not play. The opposite of play is depression. And while it is important to be serious when gravity is called for - it is not just that Netcosm presents a "low cognitive burden metaphor" to get information about when your enterprise has problems. It's also, in many ways, a fun, playful way to look at something which is not usually associated with play or fun - network performance monitoring statistics.
An early version of Netcosm looked like an aquarium instead of the "outer space" metaphor we ended up using. (And in fact, the working title of the project was "Netquarium.") But fish - well, fish aren't that fun unless you're catching them. We could have set off a beep when network packets were dropped, or found some other alert mechanism. Instead, packets fly up and explode. The reason why? Because exploding packets are more fun.
Look at developments in user interfaces over the past couple of years. Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, and a team of open-source GNOME developers all have some form of "gadget/widget" functionality with simple, single-function items that, typically, have rounded corners. No sharp edges. Suitable for kids age 3 and up. People complained that WindowsXP's default Luna color scheme "looked like the Fisher-Price version of Windows." And while some decry the pointlessness of the Beryl/Compiz project, with windows that wobble but don't fall down, and virtual desktops rotating on a cube, there is no doubting its success.
Microsoft is coming out with Surface, a table, touch (tactile stimulation!) computer screen, while Anand Agarawala spends most of his demo of physics-enabled desktop manager "Bumptop" doing nothing if not "playing around." The guys who run Slashdot also run ThinkGeek, which is nothing if not a toy store.
Is Netcosm, ultimately, a toy? Perhaps it's time that instead of saying "it's not just a toy" we start considering the possibility of saying: "Yeah, it's a toy! That's what makes it so important!"
I have to go. Scott in Marketing invited me over to try out this shocking thing that he bought.
