Smart Jobs

The usefulness of truly new applications is not a priori
knowable. And we can't ask our customers - they don't know
the future either. (For example, in 1992 there was zero
demand for web browsers.) The Stupid Network's advantage is
that it allows immediate (i.e., not mediated) user-to-user
experimentation. And lots of people love to experiment.
So the Internet provides a fertile field, and a thousand
flowers bloom. Occasionally one of these flowers catches
my eye.

The Child-Care Camera was the flower of a recent Sue
Shellenbarger Wall Street Journal column on Work & Family
(August 19, 1998). The column recounts a day-in-the-life
of the Mastons, a couple with high-tech jobs, and their
three-year-old daughter Maddie. Maddie Maston goes to a
nursery school that supports parent placement of cameras
connected to the Internet. During the day, Mr. Maston
keeps the image of his daughter's nursery school classroom
in a window on his workstation. He checks on his daughter
frequently, but briefly. His wife (a product manager in
another company) and his mother (a secretary in another
state) also look in on Maddie.

The story's unexpected twist is improved father-daughter
communication. At the end of the day, father could ask
daughter, "Were you sitting in the dark today?" because he
had seen her doing it. So prompted, the three year old
bubbled with talk about candles and birthday parties.

Without the camera, Maston might have asked, "What did you
do today?" Questions like this might seem simple to an
adult, but they are loaded with assumptions that a three-
year-old is likely to have difficulty parsing. The
question really means, "What did you do that was
interesting?" This requires a three-year-old to review her
day, culling out the event or two that might interest
somebody else - which, truth be told, is a skill that fails
many adults. The camera lets the parent take that
responsibility. The child, supplied with a specific
context, can now articulate a meaningful, sociable
response.