I. Open Begin (An interlude in fragments)

A connecting interlude unravels — A section from Ellen Ullman's book Close to the Machine — a diversion on a piece by Robert Musil about doors and openness and design — an example of how programmed language has come to be expected, and how dissemination must be counter-programmed.

It works.

The sales and finance people— the current office occupants— had a dejected and distracted air about them. They didn't have much to do except sit around and worry. Not so for the programmers. The engineers continued working their endless days and long weeks. The lead engineer went on sitting in his charged way in his cubicle, his knees opening and closing, opening and closing.
A merry kind of hysteria took over the programmers. The situation was impossible, the deadline was ridiculous, they should have been completely demoralized. But, somehow, the absurdity of it all simply released them from the reality that was so depressing the rest of the company. They played silly jokes on one another. They stayed up late to see who could finish their code first. The very impossibility of success seemed to make the process of building software only that much sweeter.
The lead engineer wanted me to come in every day to see their progress. "Look," he said, "You just select the device and drag it over to the location tree—"
"—and boom!" said another programmer, "It updates. Just like in your specs."
"And the database is updated?" I asked.
"Done!" said the lead.
"And the multiple add," said a third programmer, a young chinese woman who looked exhausted but who was clearly having the time of her life, "look at this." She typed in a few parameters and the screen filled with information as the program cranked away.
"Does it crash?" I asked.
"Only a little," she said.
"Twice yesterday," said the second programmer.
"No," said the lead, "once. Only once."
They arranged a demonstration of their work for the entire company. They put out cake, ice cream, champagne. The worried sales and finance people did their best to be impressed.
In the middle of the demo, I realized how fortunate we were to be enginneers. How lucky for us to be people who built things and took our satisfactions from humming machines and running programs. We certainly wouldn't mind if the company went public and we all got fabulously rich. But the important thing was right in front of us. We had started with some scratchings on a whiteoard and built this: this operational program, this functional thing.
"And look," said the lead, demonstrating his handiwork, "You just click here, drag here, and click here—"
"And it works, "I said.
"Yeah," he said, exhaling the word in a long breath of contentment, then standing back, exultant. "Yeah, it works."

from Close to the Machine by Ellen Ullman

The open door...

In Robert Musil's short piece "Doors and Portals," [Musil87] the door is eulogized: "Doors are a thing of the past." Fragility and weakness have conquered, the door no longer so much a portal as one thin wall among others. Eaves-dropping is no longer difficult, now even thought assails our ears. Doors just aren't what they used to be. Private spaces are no longer so, all the secrets are out, we can't even avoid them.

He goes on: "Still far more outdated than the door itself is the frame. If you cast a glance past open doors, through a suite of rooms, you'd think you were experiencing the nightmare vision of a soccer forward faced by an infinite succession of goal posts." Why not do without the frame, he asks? Unable to stand meaningfully ajar, it only jars perception. It is but a remnant: "The narrow wooden rim, lonesome, senseless, that seems to come out of nowhere and is related only to the window frame, is left as a remnant of the custom." Indeed, doors are no longer the entrance to that most important of publicly private spaces: these days we show our status in other ways— cars, vacations, second homes. "And how then should there be doors if there is no 'house'?!" In short, the door no longer represents the house, literally or figuratively. In its mundaneity there is a question of utmost importance. Think, he asks us, of all the uses of the door— opening, shutting, forcing, throwing out of, turning away from, slamming— "this was an abundance of relations with respect to life and they demonstrate that excellent mixture of realism and symbolism that language achieves when something is very important."

But, in sadness he says, "The great age of doors is behind us! It may be very spectacular to call out to someone that you are going to throw them out the door, but who has ever really seen someone 'flying' out? We don't even slam the door in anyone's face anymore, but rather refuse to receive the telephoned announcement of an unwanted visit in advance; and to sweep in front of one's door— that is, to mind one's own business— has become an inconceivable suggestion." What is left of this opening? What is the moral of this fable of the doors? Musil closes: "It is the fading history surrounding a hole that, for the time being, has still been left open to the carpenter."

What more rhetorical jambs and frames, knobs and latches remain? Take out the door, let the carpenter contemplate the hole in the wall, let design recreate something very important; the residue left over will be simply and vaguely that of openings and their varieties of closing. The content of the image is powerful because the door is both real and symbolic, boundary between public and private, inside and out, family and society. An open door policy towards someone draws them from the anonymous to the familial, across a threshold. But this poignancy is none other than openness and secrecy itself, even if the forms it takes today leave permeable and useless the doors of tradition. Openness appears everywhere as congeniality, inclusion, inspection, and most importantly, trust. Openness is both spatially and temporally a mode of fragility and a decisively secular relationship to the world and the universe . Open houses offer themselves inside-out for the satisfaction of the buyer. The offen in Offentlichkeit pulls us agoraphobics out of head and house and into the market of ideas, the public sphere where we can no longer mind only our own business. Its opposites in closure promise saftey or exclude, decide, prevent. Secrecy, privacy, interiority, family, hierarchy, control. Closed books are decisions made, closed minds are unassailable by powerful logic, closure orders and satisfies expectations, it makes the world whole again. The day is open, the night is closed, and the signal was at one time, the door.

But the great age of doors is behind us! Musil writes in the high modernist heart of pessimistic Vienna, and the pronouncement sounds a subtle satire of our contemporary bathos of the constant promise of new ages. And yet, to take it seriously, to really understand that the age when the door, both physically and symbolically protected us is really over— what would that mean? Surely we are not beyond publicity and privacy? Especially not open and closed. If the door, the architectural sine qua non of the household, is really no longer the door, where now is the decision made?

On Anticipation

From a standard SEC filing for an IPO (available from the SEC Edgar database):

Certain statements contained herein constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act") and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Exchange Act"). These forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of predictive, future-tense or forward-looking terminology, such as "believes," "anticipates," "expects," "estimates," "plans," "may," "intends," "will," or similar terms. These statements appear in a number of places in this report and include statements regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of the Company, its directors or its officers with respect to, among other things: (i) trends affecting the Company's financial condition or results of operations, (ii) the Company's business and growth strategies, (iii) the Internet and Internet commerce and (iv) the Company's financing plans. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve significant risks and uncertainties, and that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors set forth under "Risk Factors" and elsewhere in this report. The following discussion of the financial condition and results of operations of the Company should also be read in conjunction with the financial statements and notes related thereto included elsewhere in this report.

Last Modified 11-Sep-99 9:01 PM ckelty@mit.edu

Go Back to the Start