Ode to the Home (Screen) : Notes from an obscure computer history

MS Bob was an early experimental software product released by Microsoft in 1995, and discontinued
about a year later. As Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) - like the Windows operating system were fairly
new and unfamiliar for users, this program was designed to create an alternative environment or
‘interface landscape’ through which to access the programs on the personal computer. Microsoft Bob
presented screens showing a "house", with "rooms" that the user could go to, containing familiar
objects corresponding to computer applications, for instance - a desk with pen and paper, a checkbook,
and other items. Each object, when clicked upon would open up the relevant program it symbolized.
There were also a range of ‘decorative’ objects on this interface, which could be customized and
positioned in the room according to the users’ preference. The general idea was to acquaint the novice
computer user to the way its programs operated – it was designed to be akin to the process of moving
into a new house, and making it your own. MS Bob also came with a variety of animal cartoon
characters which would guide the user through specific programs; together, they formed a kind of family
or community of helpers for the user.

This program was, for many practical reasons – a failure. The cartoon characters, animation style and
loud sounds made it an uncomfortable product for professional environments, and the animal assistant,
with their incessant pop up messages and instructions were often felt to be a nuisance. Microsoft and
the world moved on from this hiccup in interface design to adopt the slick, flat interfaces of today, that
work to make their surface more and more invisible with each update.
However, we continue to make sense of the digital world largely through a similar strategy of metaphor
which became one of the foundations for interface design. This metaphor of the computer screen
representing ‘space’ perhaps began when this digital space became ‘navigable’ by a cursor or pointer. In
essence, this early GUI innovation transformed the subjective will of the computer user into a virtual
icon or ‘avatar’ that moved in this fictional space on their behalf. While this fictional space drew
metaphorically from the spaces in our ‘real world’, the rules that governed it were quite different in
essence. As such, the dimensions of virtual space are visible to the user, through the metaphors in which
they are represented.

The specific metaphor most widely used on computers today is that of the desktop – a paradigm slightly
different from the ‘home’ of MS Bob. The desktop is a place of work, and a specific kind of work which
does not directly involve manual labour in the physical world. As such the desktop – in the physical
world as well as on the personal computer – is a surface or site for the performance of work activities.
This surface in both words – is customizable, with photographs, notes, and personal items being placed
on it by the user.

The following images are custom made desktop wallpapers found from various sources on the internet.
These curious images manifest the spatial metaphor of the desktop by converting the flat surface of the
screen into a three dimensional scenery. Of course, this is done by all desktop backgrounds, but these
perspective models of indoor spaces create a conversation between the ‘background’ of the image and
the ‘foreground’ of the interface – blurring these boundaries to create a unified sense of space.

These 3D visualizations of interior spaces are constructed images which reveal multiple perspective
points on closer reading. This is what lends them a surreal quality – a kind of impossibility that is brought
to life in an attempt to mimic the ideals of perspective drawing.

These ‘desktop background’ images can be found and customized on many popular stock image
websites. As such, they often contain empty frames for the insertion of images, shelves and pin up
boards to place other custom items on and ways to modify the wallpaper and other features of the
space. These pseudo realistic images harken back to the sentiment of MS Bob, one that constructs and
impossible home inside of the interface.
Much like the home from MS Bob, these are endlessly customizable flat surfaces work to create the
illusion of depth and shelter. However, they establish the idea of residence as a part of the human
computer relationship that is constructed by the interface. For most of us today, the computer is not
just a complex machine to assist in processing tasks; it acts as a space of work and leisure so much so
that switching to a new operating system is referred to as migration.

The idea of software migration perhaps resonates the multiple anxieties of the interface paradigm we
live with today. How does one reconcile a commercial product as one’s home? And how do the
intimacies built on and through this home trickle out into the network at large? While we are
increasingly encouraged to occupy the machine as one, how much do we own our virtual homes?