Two Slashes

If you’ve ever been to or live in or near Chicago, you probably know all about “The Bean,” that shiny alien-looking thing in Millenium Park, known for being huge, metal, and, perhaps most importantly given those two qualities, seamless (at least to casual inspection).

A talk with a friend about developing technologies and upcoming expectations of what these technologies will bring led to our noticing how problematic today’s technology is, and why it won’t be getting better anytime soon.

What does this have to do with a notorious Chicago tourist trap?  General consensus today is that consumers want everything they own to work together, or at least appear that way.  They want a combination DVD-playing toaster oven/blender that can do laundry and sort recycling in tandem with a drink-cooling microwave, and they want it all to be done perfectly, with no hiccups.  Unfortunately, I have yet to see a DVD-playing toaster oven/blender that folds my laundry and sorts recyclables or a drink-cooling microwave, but that’s besides the point - the point is that they want things to work perfectly, much like the dozens of individual panels that make up “The Bean.”

As I told my friend, it’s unlikely that we’re going to be experiencing such a demonstration of perfection in any aspect of life (but most specifically technology-based endeavors) anytime soon.  There are two polar scenarios I foresee, and each comes with its own problems when it comes to development.

The first scenario is the “monopolistic scenario” in which one or two companies handle a whole industry of work.  While (seeing that this is the same company all around) the products work seamlessly, they also become rather stagnant and produce little to no improvement from version to version.  While this means that things work well, after a while people get tired of seeing the same old thing all the time and wish there was something else to go to (which in turn creates a market…blah, I’ll spare the economics class talk).

The other scenario is the “competitive scenario” - as you might have guessed, this scenario involves a large number of companies all producing similar products.  You get near-constant development and revolutionary ideas and designs, but at the same time these ideas pave the way for a plethora of different, unconnected tangents (which is, unfortunately to say, also expected when each one is determined to make a profit from their product).  This would be akin to why you can’t typically use parts from one car on another - sometimes they have a slight chance of working, but other times you’re likely to break even more.  The point here is that there’s so many things to choose from, so many choices/paths/whatever-you-call-them, that ultimately what develops is not one “right” path but a series of dead ends.

These dead ends actually crop up more than you think.  Look at the current generation of video hookups, for example:  DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort.  They all get video from point A to point B (and sometimes other things too), but each one has its own guise and is not directly compatible with one another.  DisplayPort, for example, supports daisy-chaining monitors through one cable; HDMI supports audio transmitted through the same cable.  While these are novel ideas…notice how they aren’t all that easily interoperable (well, HDMI and DVI are to an extent, but that’s not my point).  So, as consumers, we are left to either try and find what works best for our situation, and hope that everything we buy comes with support for that connection method, or sit and pray that one day someone will come along and magic everything into one “universal” connector, making themselves money, and consumers happy.

If you need a mixed example of standardization, just look on the back of your TV, computer, or home telephone.  Assuming the company that produced whatever you’re looking at isn’t an ***hat, you’re probably staring at the same menagerie of cables, ports, jacks, and plugs someone else is.  Thank standardization for that.  But at the same time, you can also note that while whatever’s plugged in there works with the setup you have now, you have the seed planted in the back of your mind worried about what happens when you need to bring in something new.  Is my mouse going to work?  Will my TV set play back the content from this Blu-ray player?  In these instances, your use isn’t seamless.  Instead, you find yourself driven by an inadvertant commitment to a specific set of technologies that may become outdated at any moment.

Another good example would be a digital camera (or more specifically the storage mediums for them).  Notice how Sony has their own “private” storage system with Memory Stick, something that Canon, Nikon, nor Kodak can or will use, and that this lock-in also means that without adapters, cables, or other fun things, the only way you can quickly show off those snapshots is by ramming them into a Sony television.  As far as seamlessly working, not bad for two things manufactured by a multimedia electronics corporation…but once you bring Toshiba or Panasonic into the mix, all bets are off.

Blame it on capitalism, blame it on everyone’s desire to keep secrets - whatever you blame, it’s probably at least a small part of why we’re in such a hole.  Unfortunately, the hole’s getting deeper by the day, and there’s no easy way to get back out.

So, I suppose you could say that “The Bean” represents not only Chicago’s continual placement of public art, but our desire for technologies and lives to work together in harmony - with no unsightly seams to tear at or detract from the beauty.  Unfortunately, “The Bean” is also the perfect metaphor for something we can’t have.  File it away with everlasting love, superpowers, and eternal life - because this is one thing that won’t be coming…at least, within our lifetimes, and I’d be pretty confident in placing bets on ‘never.’

Tech support. Not one of the happier places for a geek of any kind to work, considering the fact that most people call up with a very poor attitude and about as much patience as a bull, and the dread of every consumer, knowledgeable or not, for fear of long hold times and the chance of getting someone who’s already irritated or has about a day and a half of total experience, mostly in topics unrelated to the product at hand.

When something happens, they’re your second stop, right after a more knowledgeable friend. We all know someone we can turn to for help with this or that (or perhaps you’re the person everyone turns to), and everything seems to work out in turn. But when they fail, the next stop is a bit of wasted time on the phone.

You’re probably wondering where I’m going with this, but if you’re going to know what I’m ranting about, you need a little backstory. So here goes…

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Of course, it’s no suprise that I’m not a bigtime gamer by any means. I mean, I consider it a success if I can scrape off more than a few kills in Unreal Tournament GOTY, and I almost never play console games (yes, I suck worse). But locking the ones who do play more than me into a system so contorted and dismembered it’s like staring at a beheaded corpse in a fun-house mirror isn’t any fun. Why?

Well, let me set the record straight first. I’m not a big fan of cheaters. People who need to hack and mod their way through a deathmatch against a bunch of n00bs are just asking for themselves to be kicked around a bit. I don’t care what game it is, it’s just not right. (At least in a multiplayer setting; if you find yourself on a really hard level in a single-player game, and you use the codes sparingly, you end up restoring just a little bit of the lustre you lost when you got frustrated, right?)

But I still don’t see too many reasons why everyone needs to lock these consoles down so tight. In a world where decent home theater PCs still cost more than several of the current-generation consoles together (alright, one and a half if we’re counting in only PS3’s), it makes sense to give everyone something to muck around with. I mean, Sony abused the DVD capabilities of the PS2 to shove one into every home (hey, if it’s the cheapest DVD player at its launch…)

Some companies have played it smart and quickly embraced homebrew, both to draw customers and increase their revenue, and to encourage growth and enhancement of their product.  Rather than shutter everyone out, Cisco/Linksys extended their popular WRT54G line to cater to homebrewers when they made the generic router cheaper to manufacture and run.  TiVo regularly monitors the homebrew community for their products, and sometimes adds popular third-party hacks as features in the default TiVo system.  It seems that in just about every multimedia sector, you can find someone who offers open-source and homebrew aficionados the chance to show off their talent and extend the boundaries of the devices they hack.  Of course, in many of these cases, warranties are voided, but it is worth noting that many people are willing to sacrifice the possible cost of a new unit for the enhancements they gain as a result.

But as much as this happens in other industries, there’s absolutely no movement in the console market.  Partially, I can understand them.  They don’t want cheaters taking the fun out of games, and they certainly don’t want pirates making their games into a laughingstock of bits and bytes.  But they take it too far.

As a matter of example, take any recent cell phone.  Not really a smartphone, just your average, everyday cell phone.  Now, note that the firmware probably includes Java.  That’s right.  The cell phone manufacturer implemented Java, and left a framework which could be used for homebrew development.  To be reasonable, most of the applications you’ll see for a cell phone were probably coded with the idea that there is payment to be made somewhere down the line.  But the point remains that there is a sizable toolkit implemented on the phone itself, no problems required.

With such a toolkit already provided, it makes for little reason for anyone to resort to “exploiting” the device simply to get something that isn’t supposed to be running, well, running.  Third-party games on platforms like the PSP and iPod (aka free development and a reason for people to buy your product) only work when people find exploits that enable them in the first place.  Not only does it add value, the consumers will be able to add more functionality as they see fit.  All in all, an easy way to increase profits, the functionality of your product, and get privileged to see free market research as to what people are looking for and buying because of.

Why haven’t the console manufacturers realized that they’re giving up FREE DEVELOPMENT simply because they want to be a bunch of tightwads?  Wake up people, and realize that there are people willing to improve your products, whether you like it or not.  Maybe it’s in your best interest to embrace it, rather than hinder it.