Dancing Bears

If you’ve ever watched the Moscow Circus, you’ve seen the dancing bears. As John Irving has written: “the wonder of a dancing bear is not that the bear dances well, but that it dances at all.”

In his book, The Inmates Are Running The Asylum, Alan Cooper uses the term “dancing bear” for any product that in spite of its weak and clumsy design, is still a wonderful thing. Cooper uses his car’s keyless entry system as an example. It’s difficult to use but still useful. The benefits outweigh the annoyances.

The technology world is full of software and gadgets that are difficult to use. We put up with them because they’re useful. There ought to be a label for products like this but I’m not sure that I’d call them “dancing bears”. Getting a bear to dance is an amazing feat but it isn’t useful. I’d apply “dancing bear” to technology that was created “because it could be” rather than because the end result is something useful. Technical bravura rather than fulfilling a need. Here’s an example from the Computer History Museum: an IBM 1403 printer was programmed to “play” songs such as Raindrops Are Falling On My Head and Born Free