The motor made just a little bit of noise and the string would wiggle around indicating network activity. Soon he was able to know what was typical string movement and what was atypical frenetic motion that indicated a need to investigate.
He called it an "ambient interface" and said he had read about it somewhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calm_technology
>Calm Technology
>History
>The phrase "calm technology" was first published in the article "Designing Calm Technology", written by Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown in 1995.[1] The concept had developed amongst researchers at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in addition to the concept of ubiquitous computing.[3]
>Weiser introduced the concept of calm technology by using the example of LiveWire or "Dangling String". It is an eight-foot (2.4 m) string connected to the mounted small electric motor in the ceiling. The motor is connected to a nearby Ethernet cable. When a bit of information flows through that Ethernet cable, it causes a twitch of the motor. The more the information flows, the motor runs faster, thus creating the string to dangle or whirl depending on how much network traffic is. It has aesthetic appeal; it provides a visualization of network traffic but without being obtrusive.[4]
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190508225438/https://www.karls...
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20131214054651/http://ieeexplore...
PDF: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~./jasonh/courses/ubicomp-sp2007/paper...
[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20110706212255/https://uwspace.u...
PDF: https://web.archive.org/web/20170810073340/https://uwspace.u...
>According to Weiser, LiveWire is primarily an aesthetic object, a work of art, which secondarily allows the user to know network traffic, while expending minimal effort. It assists the user by augmenting an office with information about network traffic. Essentially, it moves traffic information from a computer screen to the ‘real world’, where the user can acquire information from it without looking directly at it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Jeremijenko#Live_Wire_...
>Natalie Jeremijenko
>Live Wire (Dangling String), 1995
>In 1995,[9] as an artist-in-residence at Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, California under the guidance of Mark Weiser, she created an art installation made up of LED cables that lit up relative to the amount of internet traffic. The work is now seen as one of the first examples of ambient or "calm" technology.[10][11]
[9] https://web.archive.org/web/20110526023949/http://mediaartis...
[10] https://web.archive.org/web/20100701035651/http://iu.berkele...
>Weiser comments on Dangling String: "Created by artist Natalie Jeremijenko, the "Dangling String" is an 8 foot piece of plastic spaghetti that hangs from a small electric motor mounted in the ceiling. The motor is electrically connected to a nearby Ethernet cable, so that each bit of information that goes past causes a tiny twitch of the motor. A very busy network causes a madly whirling string with a characteristic noise; a quiet network causes only a small twitch every few seconds. Placed in an unused corner of a hallway, the long string is visible and audible from many offices without being obtrusive."
[11] https://web.archive.org/web/20120313074738/http://ipv6.com/a...
>Mark Weiser suggested the idea of enormous number of ubiquitous computers embedding into everything in our everyday life so that we use them anytime, anywhere without the knowledge of them. Today, ubiquitous computing is still at an early phase as it requires revolutionary software and hardware technologies.