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by Ben Last.
Original Post: It Is A Truth Universally Acknowledged...
Feed Title: The Law Of Unintended Consequences
Feed URL: http://benlast.livejournal.com/data/rss
Feed Description: The Law Of Unintended Consequences
...that product managers are like sheep. Give them a tiny sniff of market success for a fledgling idea and they will pile on it a mountain of successors, imitators and followups. Same applies, of course, to movie producers, or record company executives. For every Gladiator, we get a Troy. For every Elvis, we get a Cliff.
One of the many reasons I like the whole SMS thing (and by "thing" I mean the social phenomenon, the business impact and the entire messaging culture, all in that one little word) is that it was so entirely Unintended. The Law kicks in, and the Consequences are so very out of scale with the original tiny engineering decision that made it all happen. And the waves of followups have been ever higher, and ever less connected to what it is that people actually do. Consider Nokia Wave Messaging. Personally, when I'm within six foot of someone, I'm inclined to use my voice for communication. On the other hand, Nokia seem to be doing a lot of this sort of thing lately; launching odd products at strange price points, probably to learn more about the market. And given the way that mobile phones and their hardware in general seem to be commoditizing like cookies, they're probably doing something right.
Not even I, however, can find a link tortuous enough to bring me from odd phones to the myriad uses of the name Janus. Many years ago, when I was but a mere stripling, the idea of the two-faced Roman god stayed with me, interestingly close enough to the concept of multiple interfaces on an object. Thus, throughout my life, I've tended to use the name; for a user-interface library (one face to the user, one to the code), or for the firewall machine that sits beneath my desk here (one face to the Internet, one face to the LAN). I was, admittedly, unaware for a long time that it was also the name of a somewhat specialist shop in London (and that link may not be safe for work), which led to a certain amount of office rumour at times, but hey, the only thing worse than being talked about, etc, etc. Anyway, the name pops up again as Microsoft launch their DRM solution. Which, of course, they've called Janus. Because they're two faced? Or because it'll give you a thorough spanking if you attempt to break the restrictions? Only Ballmer can say...
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