Our scope is that to help our readers to better understand the key concepts of Clown Computing. Clown Computing is defined as an IT technology able to provide services in an hilarious and unpredictable way. Clown computing is strongly based on the synergy of different communication technologies (mobile phone, internet chat, etc…) flavored with a bit of personal psychological approach. The better way to introduce the Clown computing key concepts it’s to describe the solution of a common problem for mobile user: printing to a printer. Top consultants are traveling a lot and often they are working in huge buildings unknown to them. Sometimes they need to print a document on a printer whose they don’t know the location inside the building. What they know is often a useless name like “Digital Printer” or an IP address, but nothing that can help them to locate the printer inside the building. There are lot of cases where top consultants were never able to find the printed documents, even after several printing trials to different printers. Clown Computing is able to solve cases like that. What you need is to apply a CCULP (Clown Computing Unknown Location Printing) technique. To use this technique you need, apart a computer and an unknown location printer, of course, also the following tools:
- A mobile phone
- A Clown Nose
Before to print the document to the unknown printer, you have to insert in the first page of your document the following form:
The insertion of this form it’s fundamental to make the CCULP working. You have to put your mobile phone number instead of the text marked “<put your mobile phone number>” and print the document to the unknown printer. After a certain amount of unpredictable time (uncertainty is part of Clown Computing technology) you will receive a call by somebody that found your printed document, claiming for the one million dollars. You have just to ask this person where the printer is located, ask him to take the document and go there (believe me, he will explain you with very detailed directions how to get there). Remember to bring with you the clown nose, that is a very important component of the CCULP. When you arrive at the printer, verify that the person that called you is there and only at that moment, put the clown nose on your nose and say:”Little joke! There is no million to win. Now, please can you give me the document?”. It’s very important that you wear the clown nose while saying that. In some cases, the person refuses to give the document and in other few cases he/she shreds it in small pieces. It is demonstrated that wearing the clown nose it reduces this cases by 90%, making the CCULP a quite reliable technique. By the way, it is not possible to guarantee a 100% success, but uncertainty is part of Clown Computing technology, as already said.
Several researchers are studying how to reduce the uncertainty in Clown Computing technology and are obtaining quite good results. Always considering the Clown Computing Unknown Location Printing technique, they improved considerably its reliability modifying the sequencing of the execution steps. They observed that asking to have the document before saying to the person that is a joke, reduce the unsuccessful cases by 98.5%, a sensitive improvement. In this case it seems that wearing the clown nose does not have a lot of impact in getting the document (you already got it) but can reduce the cases of injuries that can be caused by ireful persons.
Other researchers are working on how to improve the performance of the CCULP. One of those researchers modified the mechanism of getting the document from a Go-To-There in a Bring-To-Me mechanism. In this case, when the top consultant that printed the document receives the call of the person that claims for the one million dollars, he has not to ask for directions to get to the unknown printer, but he has to ask the person to bring him the document in the place where the top consultant is. Because the building is unknown to the top consultant, the person bringing the document will take less time to reach him than the top consultant to find the unknown printer, resulting in a sensitive improvement of the performance. By the way, in this case it seems that the Clown Nose wearing is not so effective in reducing the negative cases (document not delivered or shredded), indeed the performance improvement being counterbalanced by an increasing in the delivery uncertainty.
