the story

What was first? Was it talking or sending files over the Net? Isn't safe talk even more important than safe… way? I mean don't you feel much less alone after you got on the Net?

I had a painting called Loneliness living in subway cars (d'après Matisse). The metaphor was (how stupid is it to describe the idea of a painting in a mulitmedia environment — but the painting is long gone) — how lonely you feel when you are packed in with other people.

So everyone I know uses talk programs (quite a strange conclusion, but that's what I like about metaphors — they manifest the secret brotherhood of otherwise completely estranged things and objects).

We use talk programs everyday. But there are selected, very special people, whom you just ping, open the talk session, say hi — and then close the talk window — but you both stay on and the coolest thing is to know that there is someone miles (Hacker would say: kilometers) away to whom you can talk any time you want.

The talk window stays in the background all day almost like good music — so you work with it on — (I actually could never work with the music on but I just thought it was a cool metaphor). And whatever you do — after you finished (well let's say, an alpha version) — you want to send it to your special people (they are always in the background, like music, remember?).

And it's so aesthetically wrong to run a huge and ugly FTP program at these times — when you're still savouring your product — you just want to click a button and send them the damn file! To be asked what their name is, is a blasphemy (remember — Names can be named, but not the real name — in Tao Teh Ching?) — What do you mean what is their IP address if I talk to them everyday?

So Hacker wrote PumKIN, which crowns our glorious threesome. (Hacker read this page and said that PumpKIN is a tftp client/server, so it can also be used for maintaining CISCOs, but I don't have a cool metaphor for CISCO)