The Chumby Diaries: A Partial-Attention Love-Hate Story

Like Tom Hanks’ volleyball friend, Wilson, in Cast Away, Chumby has a personality. Cute and cuddly Chumby is ripe to be anthropomorphized.

“Aren’t you, Chumby?” I say, petting it on the head. “Yes you are. Yesh yooou are.”

Ryan Ward

Related Content

• Gays Could Win Presidential Election for Barack Obama, Says Gallup Report
  October 25, 2012
• Obama Coming To L.A., Still Wants Our Money Despite Election Win
  May 3, 2013
• Antonio Villaraigosa Grabs the Third Rail; Embrace of Social Security Cuts May Complicate Future Campaigns
  April 11, 2013
• Illegal Immigrants Hit The Streets As ICE Fears Sequester Cuts; Republicans Pissed
  February 26, 2013
• Democratic Party Schism over Scandalous Schools: Gloria Romero, Slimed By Teacher Unions, Says Sober Up
  April 22, 2013

More About

• Barack Obama
• Chuck Norris
• I.T. Department
• Software
• Science and Technology

Its planaria charm dangles roguishly.

Day 8

There are things the Chumby cannot do. The Chumby cannot take a bath with me. Well, it could, but that would probably be the last thing it ever did. I cannot keyword-search on the Chumby. I cannot buy things on the Chumby. I cannot surf the Net with the Chumby. I cannot make a phone call on the Chumby. I cannot stash the Chumby in my pocket and whip it out during a meeting, all slicklike, to casually check e-mail. The Chumby is the anti-iPod.

I turn the Chumby off for the afternoon. Something about its perpetually cycling through endless loops of widgets unnerves me. It’s been there in the background for days, lurking in my peripheral vision. At times, I catch it staring at me. Literally. I’ve loaded it with a widget of a giant human eye. The retina darts back and forth, as if peeping out from behind the screen. The honeymoon is definitely over.

When I turn Chumby back on again some hours later, a “Skillet Corn Bread Pudding with Ham and Pepper Jack” recipe from the Food Network’s Recipe of the Day widget pops up ... while I’m eating corn bread. Now, this is creepy. Had the recipe been cycling all day, subliminally implanting me with the desire to eat corn bread? Or did Chumby sense the food present in the room and dredge up content to match? That’s ridiculous, of course. The Chumby isn’t psychic.

Is it?

Day 9

“Why would you spend $180 for an alarm clock?” a friend asks.

“But it’s not just an alarm clock.” I mumble something about the 500 widgets across 28 categories.

“Of course not,” he says. “It’s an alarm clock that will steal all your passwords.”

Is the Chumby going to steal all my passwords? Can I trust you, Chumby?

Digital devices are the new frontier for information stealing. A couple of years ago, a credit union hired a security company to find out how easy it would be to break into its network. The hackers-for-hire snuck into the parking lot early in the morning and scattered infected USB flash drives on the ground. Employees picked them up, plugged them in, and the virus began e-mailing information back to the hackers. Too easy.

Then, this February, a little-publicized story broke about Chinese digital photo frames being sold at Best Buy, which came pre-installed with a Trojan Horse virus. Once you plugged the frame into your computer, it blocked 100 kinds of antivirus software and began stealing passwords. It spread by hiding itself in any portable storage device that plugged into the infected computer. The security-company analysts who studied the virus — they called it “the nuclear bomb of malware” — believe the Trojan, which only stole gaming passwords, was an early test for a future, bigger attack.

“Can the Chumby give my computer a virus?” I write the Chumby creators.

Day 10

Duane, VP of software development, writes back. Because Chumby is not a storage device, it cannot be used as a vector for virus propagation. “We wouldn’t ever claim that the Chumby is a 100 percent secure device that could never be exploited, because that’s simply an impossible thing to claim,” Duane says. “However, the system is locked down pretty tight — first off, by being a Linux-based system; secondly, by using unmodifiable, read-only file systems; and thirdly, by using a sandboxed virtual machine for our application layer.”

Phew! Chumby, you’re not so bad. The Chumby rolls with its own posse of Chumby fans — alpha geeks, all — via a Web site, blog and community forum.

I’m reminded of the second quote encapsulating the Chumby business strategy. Mao Zedong said: “Let 100 flowers bloom; let 100 schools of thought contend.”

Perhaps the Chumby is a harbinger of cultural revolution. For good, for bad, it is a shift in the winds about how we relate to the Internet.

The device is open-source, which means that anyone can write software for it. Moreover, it is meant to take advantage of the hundreds of so-named “continuous partial attention” moments during the day. That moment between waking up and brushing your teeth, for example. Why, that moment is painfully blank! Might it not be more usefully filled with stock quotes, perhaps, or the weather report or spiritual advice from Buddha? Or a piece of advertising from the Gap. If you don’t believe that sort of marketing ploy actually works, then I have a freaky story about corn bread to tell you.

Day 11

Drat! The neighbors are on to me. Their Wi-Fi is now locked. “Failed to obtain IP address,” Chumby mourns. “Chumby.com is unreachable.” There will be no crackling miniature fire flickering on its screen tonight. No Shamu or panda or polar bear or dolphin updates. No romantic vistas from atop the Eiffel Tower. No views of current traffic on the Hollywood Freeway.