What is the Sound of One Footprint Disappearing?

03.21.08 | Category: Interaction Design, Simplicity


The Transformation of Tangible to Intangible

Sixty years ago the value of productivity and wealth was determined by the value of the tangible property you made or possessed. Whether it was houses, factories, manufactured products or portfolios the driving force measuring value was tangible property. Tangible property was the base of most government revenue from all sources other than income taxes. Even income taxes were indirectly driven by the wage paid for creating tangible property.

In the 1960’s that all began to change. Information technology was silently converting tangible property to the intangible with the value of the intangible determined by the value of the intelligence it contained and not the tangible property. Resources consumed and standards of living were going to be highly impacted.

A personal story that illustrates the transformative power of information technology centers on my purchase of two fax machines. In 1974 fax machines were a necessity for law practice. Until 1974 our firm used a variety of fax machines most of which required 4 to 10 minutes a page, often involved a messy wet output whose legible half-life was probably a month. After two months the transmitted copy crumbled or the writing disappeared. Not a good situation for a law firm receiving or sending documents that had to be read decades later. Xerox made a giant faxing breakthrough by developing a less-than-one-minute faxmachine. Being very frustrated by current faxing technology and somewhat enamored with new technology, I started the acquisition process.

Although we were in a quake proof new office building we hired a structural engineer to assure the office building owner that when this new marvel was put into place, it would not crash through the 8th floor and create an unplanned elevator shaft to the basement. Its footprint exceeded five square feet and when placed on the floor it came up to my chest. Its weight was measured in tons; it contained more than 18,000 feet of wiring and many large and small iron, steel and rubber parts. It cost in excess of $100,000 which was equal 1000 of my billable hours.

Today I have a fax machine on my desk in my home office that transmits 8 pages in less than a minute, weighs less than 5 lbs, has a footprint of less than a square foot, contains less than 100 feet of wiring, and costs $125. I can fix a paper jam and replace the blank paper without risking my hand or arms while standing upright. Oh, and it also functions as a telephone, answering machine and a plain paper copier. Its impact on my standard of living is that I own a machine that has four times the functions of Xerox’s magic machine and is 8 times faster. My new fax machine transformed tangible property costing $100k into intangible property costing $125. It consumes a fraction of one percent of the natural resources required for the big guy and only 1/5th of a billable hour to pay for it.

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14 Comments so far

  1. Drue Kataoka 03.21.08 at 10:26 am

    Bill’s insightful post inspired me to create a disappearing footprint to riff off his theme of the tangible moving to the intangible. Bill’s comparison of the two footprints is also right in tune with the concept of reducing carbon footprints.

  2. Mike Harmon 03.21.08 at 10:26 am

    I came across your blog on Technorati. Nice site layout. I will stop by and read more soon.

    Mike Harmon

  3. Drue Kataoka 03.21.08 at 10:46 am

    Welcome Mike — thanks for leaving your first footprint today @ ValleyZen.

  4. Patrick Reilly 03.21.08 at 1:41 pm

    Several generations ago most personal wealth was directly derived from ownership of real property (i.e., real estate) and personalty (i.e., objects, such as gold or equipment). With the advent of the publicly traded common stock corporation, more and more personal wealth is derived from equity securities instruments. And as most corporate valuations are now determined more by intangible assets than by tangible assets, mergers and acquisitions of corporate entities within an advanced industrial economy are often essentially transfers of equity rights over intellectual properties. We therefore are living at a time when an entire generation’s opportunity to create and distribute wealth is no longer restricted (or enhanced) by geography and resource allocations. Our only nonrenewable resources may be the essential limitations of the Earth’s life sustaining capacity and time itself.

  5. Bill Fenwick 03.21.08 at 5:03 pm

    Patrick, your comment leaves me with a good feeling that the choir and I are on the same page. It causes me to wonder what transformation of information can be done to achieve the same efficiency in time consumption required to transfer it between people and entities. Conserving time and effort to transfer may be our greatest need other than conserving air, water and energy. And the beat accellerates.

  6. Drue Kataoka 03.21.08 at 5:40 pm

    When I created the “Disappearing Footprint” I purposefully brushed the shape around the ball and arch of the foot so that it would echo the curve of a question mark.

    The image itself urgently questions us — a visual counterpart in tune with Bill’s and Patrick’s important questions.

  7. Carl Chavez 03.22.08 at 10:30 am

    The footprint can be a poignant reminder of our mortality. Its longevity is limited by the forces of nature or the destructiveness of man. But once in a while, footprints can last millions of years. It just depends on where and when they happen to be deposited. I have a feeling that yours will last for some time to come.

  8. Patrick Reilly 03.22.08 at 9:59 pm

    As personal wealth is becoming increasingly based upon the ownership of creative work, I am concerned that a separation is forming between those who generate art and knowledge, and those who receive the benefits of, and control access to, commercially significant creative works. The current intellectual property regime generally makes sense in those domains, art forms and technologies that are capital intensive, wherein private parties provide massive funding and take significant risks, e.g., motion picture production, pharmaceutical development, and space exploration. But there are many other domains of art and technology, e.g., software, music, and fiction writing, where individuals can make major innovations and that funding is primarily needed for marketing. In addition, when private industry leverages IP that is generated or even instantiated by government funding (e.g., the Internet), does it not seem that the polity as a whole should have some ownership participation the resulting ventures?

  9. Bill Fenwick 03.23.08 at 10:32 am

    Patrick,
    My response to the question you raise depends on the definition of “polity.” If you reference the four hits on http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/polity, they all have one or more definitions that seem to imply regulation. The extremists on the issue of government involvement in the innovation process are both wrong. While society ultimately judges what contributes most there is no constant absolute answer as to whether or what the polity should own. The biggest benefactor may be the most destructive force. A good example is the raging local, national and international arguments about who should own and/or control the Internet. On different days I favor a different answer. When one sees how the Chinese, Russian and Burmese governments manipulate the distribution of information to their citizens and the rest of the world by controlling access to the Internet the answer is different. When you see how democratic governments can alter the scientific conclusions about such issues as global warming you recognize the benefits open access and little or no governmental control. I suppose if polity means government I could accept public ownership if it were accompanied by little or no participation in control. There still remains the question, What governments?

    Thank you for your informative comments.

  10. Gunter Seefeldt 03.23.08 at 3:59 pm

    Art of this nature may be the remedy and hope for a better tomorrow at a time when we in the United States are faced with the worst political and economic dilemma ever.

  11. John Brewton 03.24.08 at 6:13 pm

    Posts such as these affirm my conviction that the cultural institution of the newspaper will eventually thrive in spite of its current dismal state. That is to say, I believe that a digital, web-based format for receiving and distributing news offers a potentially better value to the consumer and a more flexible, dynamic profit structure for the corporations which financially support and direct them. Achieving these ends is certainly a complex matter, however observing the success of other industries that have evolved their technology and approach to realize success from the intangible is inspiring.

  12. Drue Kataoka 03.24.08 at 7:17 pm

    Gunter, your website says you’ve placed 15,000 students in nearly ever country around the world, so you certainly have a global perspective. I appreciate your reflection about the important role art can play at this time.

    John – Your comment is heartening. It is a complex matter that could be aided greatly by an infusion of Zen simplicity.

  13. Costa 03.25.08 at 12:55 am

    I read your note on the disappearing footprint before leaving for a bike ride with my son, who is training for running the London marathon. During the ride I was thinking that in a way your note about the sound of a disappearing footstep is a kind of a very modern and relevant koan. It made me to reflect on several things: (a) present footstep of ’savage’ development (the footprint) will have to disappear, or we all will disappear (by the effects of global warming); (b) though it is true that IP and the production of intangibles is strongly related to the accumulation of (new) wealth (by relatively few people), it is equally true that most of the people all over the world have little to do with it, presenting a difficult problem for most of the developing world (particularly in the areas of public health and agriculture); (c) in relation with climate change, the present trends indicating the conflict between fuel and food are a good warning about the role to be played by science and technology in order to avoid the damaging impacts of food price rise on the poorest societies in the planet.

    When I finished mt bike ride I have to confess that the disappearing footprint continues to resonate and to generate many more ‘internal conversations’. Thanks for it!

  14. Tristan Naramore 03.25.08 at 9:40 pm

    I have a feeling that, like Costa, this image and discussion of “the footprint” will stay with me for days, perhaps much longer.

    While I certainly applaud the astounding technological achievements that we’ve achieved, I do worry about how many of us enjoying these benefits forget that all the intangibles are, at their root, created out of something tangible. True that the modern faxmachine/copier/phone may use less resources on a per machine basis, but what if you account for ALL the millions of fax machines out there now (compared to the early 70s)? And what about the price of the accelerating innovation, obsolescence? That $125 machine will be replaced by something much faster and smarter (and cheaper!) in just a few years.

    This way of doing things does not seem sustainable. However, mankind seems to be blessed with an innate ability to overcome the odds and consistently produce unexpected results. Perhaps that’s what technology itself stems from. Perhaps this unprecedented era of progress and prowess is just a step towards something bigger that we can fathom.

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