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Willy Wonka and the Dot-Com Bubble Gum

Reprinted from Webmonkey

Little surprises around every corner, but nothing dangerous.

Once upon a time, a man of mystery and magic fired the imaginations of the masses (young adults and jaded financiers alike). His playful but energetic take on his chosen profession fueled great speculation and controversy. No, I'm not talking about Louis Rosetto, the founder and erstwhile editor of Wired magazine. I'm talking about Willy Wonka, fictional candy man.

Thirty years before the bubble burst in late 2000, filmmaker David Wolper adapted Roald Dahl's fanciful children's book for the screen. What some doubtlessly still think of as a simple morality tale for pre-schoolers ("be nice, don't chew gum, don't be greedy, don't watch too much television") hides a deeper and far more chilling message.

Had we all paid a lot more attention, we might have noticed it was an utterly prescient foretelling of the heady, exuberant days when the internet and the web ran full steam (if you Victorian cyberpunk fans will pardon the phrase) into the public consciousness, and, like an Oompa-Loompa into the swollen Violet Beauregard, bounced off.

It's even more amazing to think that Dahl's original book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, was published in 1964, the same year Paul Baran published his ground-breaking paper on distributed communications and packet switched networking that inspired the creation of the ARPANET and finally the internet. Perhaps Dahl had access to the early RAND studies published between 1960 and 1962. Or maybe he was gifted with the second sight we all wish we had possessed back when fortunes were being made and the world changed, before the war on terror and a nuclear North Korea, when a child's movie showed us a way to enjoy our dreams and give free reign to our imaginations.

Willy Wonka could form the soundtrack to any retelling of the early dot-com days with telling lyrics, "who can take tomorrow, dip it in a dream/separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream" and "the world tastes good 'cause the candy man thinks it should." In the opening scene, children run from school into the candy store and the Pied Piper candy store man serenades the kids as they run rampage, eating candy by the pound.

Charlie Bucket, potentially the first victim of the digital divide, peers in the window as the song ends, before he heads off to work delivering newspapers, on foot no less. This is clearly a boy who will suffer in classic Horatio Alger style, working his way up from the bottom. And yet we identify with Charlie, whose indomitable spirit and complete lack of cash or marketable skills reminds underemployed liberal arts graduates of their own post-graduation days. Or maybe that's just me. I was blond as a young boy, too, and had just as bad a haircut.

As he looks at the factory through the iron gate, he is menaced by a tinker, a frightening man who obviously sharpens knives for a living, who warns him "nobody ever goes in, nobody ever comes out," as if to tell Charlie he'll never achieve his dream. Little did either of them suspect that in a few days, Charlie would visit and later own the factory itself -- analogous to the creation from whole cloth of entire industries thanks to the internet and the web.

Grampa Joe then tells Charlie why nobody is allowed into the factory: Wonka's fear of intellectual property theft and industrial espionage, especially by representative or agents of Slugworth, his competitor and former partner. (An oblique reference to Apple?)

We later find out Wonka has replaced all his workers with Oompa-Loompas, the original H1-B visa holders, without whom the factory couldn't survive. To fend off domestic competition, Wonka sees to it that the Oompa-Loompas never leave the factory so they can't possibly take any secrets with them. Indeed, without them, very little would get done at all.

Charlie's education, as well as the reaction of mainstream media and traditional brick-and-mortar businesses towards the early web consulting firms, can be summed up with the quote from Mr. Turkentine:

If you knew and I didn't know, then you'd be teaching me instead of me teaching you — and for a student to be teaching his teacher is presumptuous and rude.

Fortunately, the explosive chemistry experiment (and wart remover) is interrupted by news that Wonka intends to open his factory, hidden lo these many years: call it an "initial public opening." Charlie is spared any further exposure to science as the class and teacher rush off to buy Wonka bars, in hopes of being the five to find a golden ticket. The lucky five will therefore be allowed into the factory, as well as being given a lifetime supply of chocolate. Surely an initial public offering could not have been given a more fitting metaphor, nor could Charlie's being left out of the initial furor because of his abject poverty.

In the furor surrounding the Wonka IPO, the pace picks up, the tone like something out of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Despite the best efforts of the Establishment (as symbolized by the psychiatrist) to keep the madness in check, no sooner does the shrink say "To believe in one's dreams is a manifestation of insanity, and the sooner you accept this, the sooner you'll get well," than his patient, Henry Blodgett-like, suggests that he knows where to find a golden ticket. (Never mind that it was a dream, the messenger was an archangel, and the patient is obviously deranged; the shrink angrily demands to be told the details, much as so many practitioners of insider trading surely did during the boom.)

The first to win a ticket, Augustus Gloop, the son of a butcher, is sorry for Wonka: "it's going to cost him a fortune in fudge." Augustus is plainly destined to become a Unix systems administrator, though he is of course too young to grow a beard. And here we see the first appearance of the mysterious stranger, tempting the children with who knows what. Perhaps he's the son of Miriam Abacha, and has lots of cash stashed away in an undisclosed location, and he's offering them some of it if they only tell him their bank account number.

Veruca Salt, the peanut magnate's spoiled daughter, raises the odds of finding a ticket by gaming the system — her father buys millions of bars and has his staff sift through them in search of the ticket. Like those involved in the various attempts to crack RC5 or DES, or even the SETI@Home experiment via massive, distributed computing, Veruca knows that to find the key you must sweep as much of the keyspace as you can.

Her pity for the overworked staff is evident as she hollers, "make 'em work nights!" Surely nobody ever worked long hours during the boom for the reward of knowing that their employer's family would enjoy the spoils. Fortunately, the dad offers a 1-pound bonus to whoever finds the ticket, so all is not lost. As soon as it's found, the mysterious man reappears, whispering in Veruca's ear. This time, he's probably warning her that her bank account may have been compromised, and is asking her to verify her login and password.

The next scene features a demo (on a Siemens System 4004, no less, the size of a Fedex/Kinko's copier, and perhaps the first fully transistorized digital computer) before a group of dour "investors," in which the computer refuses to reveal the location of the last three tickets ("that would be cheating"). The programmer, who is apparently typing at random into the four-button user interface and drawing punch- card answers out of what looks like the coin slot for a Laundromat washing machine, offers to share the reward. In response, the computer asks, "What would a computer do with a lifetime supply of chocolate?" But I'm sure we've all experienced, or given, demos that went like that.

The opportunistic Violet Beauregard, who gave up chronic, record-breaking gum chewing until she found the third ticket (at which point, she switched back to gum), is also approached by the mysterious whispering stranger as her father tries to use the resulting media circus to sell used cars. I don't think anyone has any doubt what ol' Dad would be selling or how he'd be selling it today: "medications" to enhance your anatomy, probably made from pine straw and used motor oil. Dad and the mysterious stranger get along like old friends.

Charlie's mom, the washerwoman, offers what is perhaps the best, if maybe also the most cynical, advice for anyone in these post-bubble days: "After this contest is over, you'll be no different from the billions of others who didn't find (a ticket)." And then she proceeds to wash 5,000 shirts, while singing and dancing.

Mike Teevee, slave to the tube, is so excited about the ticket he finds that he's unwilling to turn away from the set until the commercial break. Once again, the mysterious stranger appears, offering free prescription medication. It's clear that Mike is not going to prosper in the dot-com era; he's far too fond of television. Now we understand why "reality TV" became so popular in America during this era. Because of people like Mike.

The auction of the last case of Wonka bars in the U.K. proceeds like the Netscape IPO, but the Queen steps in with the winning bid. A woman's husband's kidnappers offer to trade him for her case of Wonka bars, and she asks "How much time will they give me to think it over?" Obviously, Wonka bars are NSCP stock options or Google stock. Charlie would have felt right at home talking to someone whose company's stock was below their option strike price.

The gambler who found the fifth ticket turns out to be a fraud, like, say, the much-made-over but ultimately unsatisfying Pets.com: "Can you imagine the nerve of that guy? Trying to fool the whole world?"

The contest is on again, right after Charlie finds a coin in the gutter and spends it on still more chocolate — and one Wonka bar, supposedly for his Grampa Joe. Never mind that Charlie opens the bar and finds the last ticket himself. I'm sure he meant to give it to his bedridden grandfather to ease the tedium of cabbage water soup. Charlie bleeds money like his wallet has Ebola, never mind that his entire family lives in poverty. It's a good thing he lucked into that ticket — now his family will be able to eat chocolate bars with their gruel. But hey, he sure is good natured, and that counts for something, right?

On his way home, Charlie is accosted by the now-familiar stranger, who turns out to be the Nazi-like Arthur Slugworth, Wonka's chief competitor. Slugworth wants Charlie to steal the everlasting gobstopper, a product still in R&D. Charlie's 30 pieces of silver? Why, stock options, of course: "I'm going to make you very rich, indeed.… (Enough to buy) a new house for (the) family, good food and comfort for the rest of their lives." Or maybe he's actually offering to sell Charlie a list of 500 million guaranteed opt-in email addresses, sorted by astrological sign.

Makes you wonder about Slugworth, though. How does he always know where the next ticket will be found? RFID tags?

Charlie's Grampa Joe, supposedly bedridden with the other grandparents for these past 20 years, like a horrible foursome of Tithonuses starring in a revival of Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, accompanies Charlie to the factory after a long song and dance (!) about how "they" have a golden ticket. Apparently, universal health care could be replaced by some candy bars and gold foil. OK, and hope.

Mrs. Teevee: I assume there's an accident indemnity clause?
Willy Wonka: Never between friends.

The "contract" at the beginning would make any venture capitalist proud, as Sam well knows: "Don't talk to me about contracts, Wonka, I use 'em myself. They're strictly for suckers."

Sadly, the kids want in, and before the lawyers can be summoned, they've all signed up. Only Charlie's Grampa Joe realizes they have "nothing to lose" and so does not worry at all. And Wonka fires off yet another excellent series of aphorisms worthy of a 1994 Wired magazine article.

You should never, ever, doubt what nobody is sure about.

In this room, all of my dreams become realities, and some of my realities become dreams. And everything inside is eatable, I mean edible, I mean you can eat everything.

Come with me, and you'll be, in a world of pure imagination!

The sound of Wonka's cane whipping through the air is the sound they used for the iChat "Buddy becomes available" alert sound. Really. Trust me.

If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it. Want to change the world? There's nothing to it!

There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there, you'll be free if you truly wish to be.

In a song eerily reminiscent of the Cyberlibertarians of the middle '90s who so bothered Paulina Borsook, Wonka sums up in a few stanzas what so many believed: You don't even need to build it, you just have to believe, and you'll be free.

Now is when the Oompa-Loompas enter the picture, giving the lie to the idea that all proceeds from the pure imagination. Cloaking himself in the aura of savior to the poor little edible Oompa-Loompas, Wonka compares his enterprise with the dangerous environment of Loompaland, packed with Vermicious Knids and Snozzwangers. These little net slaves toil to please the sweet tooth of humanity, while the capitalist Wonka reaps the benefits.

Augustus drinks from the chocolate river, falls in when Wonka freaks out about it, and it's soon clear that Wonka could care less: "The suspense is terrible -- I hope it will last!" Fortunately, Augustus got what he wanted, to spend his time in the factory drowning in fudge. The Oompa-Loompas take advantage of the moment to sing a rather odd and preachy song about the dangers of sweets (I suppose of anybody, they would know) that ends with "if you're not greedy you will go far." Perhaps Augustus became a spammer after the crash, drowning others in fudge of a different sort.

The adventurers get into a boat that heads into a dark tunnel. "Round the world and home again, that's the sailor's way." Faster and faster, into the tunnel. A metaphor for the rapid rise of the dot-com stocks?

Mr. Salt: You can't possibly see where you're going!
Wonka: You're right, I can't.

The resulting freak-out is straight out of a dot-com company quarterly report. Then we visit the R&D area, where the future is being born. Wonka says, "Invention, my dear friends, is 93 percent perspiration, 6 percent electricity, 4 percent evaporation, and 2 percent butterscotch ripple." The problem is clear. He can't even do basic math.

The scene with Violet should be familiar to all of us by now, especially those who've been on the net since the early '90s. Wonka announces to the guests, "This piece of gum is a three-course meal." Violet, told not to eat it, of course immediately indulges, and succumbs to a bug, after which she "harmlessly" swells into the size of an Airstream trailer and turns purple.

She has to be squeezed immediately before she explodes. It's a relatively simple operation.

In a nutshell, beta software.

Yet another mention of bubbles is made in the Fizzy Lifting Drinks room, where Charlie and Grampa indulge a bit.

Bubbles, bubbles, everywhere, but not a drop to drink. Yet.

Oddly, Grampa Joe and Charlie are the only ones to secretly, or at least discreetly, disobey Wonka by drinking the fizzy lifting drinks and cheerfully floating around in the bubbles. Soon, they are soaring upward into the silo and drifting dangerously near a giant fan that is making a corresponding Giant Sucking Sound.

Charlie: I'm going too high!
Joe: We're in trouble, Charlie!

This is all obviously a metaphor for irrational exuberance, with Joe playing the part of U. S. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan. Apparently, the only way to deflate a dangerous stock market bubble is to scare it into belching. Lessons for the future! We see bubbles again in the Wonkamobile scene, where the remaining kids and their escorts are nearly inundated by foamy bubbles, which leak from the engine of the vehicle, itself fueled by bottle after bottle of soda pop. Fortunately, a magic car wash (also known as "restating earnings") can wipe away all traces of the foam, and our intrepid adventurers plow on.

In the next room, quadruple-sized geese work overtime for Easter laying giant golden eggs. Mike Teavee yells, "Easter's over!" and Wonka attacks him, puts his hand over his mouth and explains that the geese don't know that. They're trying to get ahead for next year. Typical. On second thought, Teavee should have been a stock analyst.

Veruca must have a golden goose. Dad tries to buy one, but they're not for sale. She goes on a rant.

I want the world, I want the whole world, I want to lock it all up in my pocket! I want today, I want tomorrow! I don't want to share! If I don't get the things I am after, I'm going to scream!

Without a doubt, this is a story of open-source, free software versus proprietary, copyright and patent law, and so forth. Equally likely though, it's a metaphor for the birth of the internet from the endless deep coffers of Cold War defense spending, suddenly patented by corporate interests. Veruca could be the CEO of any number of large corporations, but if she had to aim lower, she'd probably be just as happy as a lawyer for SCO.

If the good Lord had intended us to walk, he wouldn't have invented roller skates.

The above quote could be a motto for the era, or for Segway.

With a demonstration of Wonkavision, the old wizard is seen transmitting solid objects (Wonka Bars) via television. If Pets.com had this technology, they'd still be around today. Or maybe they did, and they used it to turn their early venture rounds (like huge bars of chocolate) into smaller and smaller piles of cash. "A million pieces take a long time to put together," we're told. Mike's been miniaturized. And Mom carries him away in her purse, sealing the "cash" metaphor. That he's dressed in an Intel "bunny suit" just strengthens the visual metaphor and ties everything back to information technology.

The Oompa-Loompas recommend reading a book instead of watching TV. "You'll get no commercials!" Too bad you can't read the web without them nowadays, like you could back in the early days.

Charlie Bucket: Mr. Wonka, what's gonna happen to the other kids? Augustus, Veruca?

Willy Wonka: My dear boy, I promise you they'll be quite all right. When they leave here, they'll be completely restored to their normal, terrible old selves. But maybe they'll be a little bit wiser for the wear. Anyway, don't worry about them.

Yeah, they'll find jobs in the textile industry or in a call center in India or China. Or they'll work for "outsourcing" companies, only they will be called "micro-entrepreneurial offshoring insourcers" or something.

Charlie doesn't get the lifetime supply of chocolate because he broke the rules. Rules? All of a sudden there are rules? Ah, but they were there all along, expressed in contracts composed almost entirely of tiny type and signed in haste, to be regretted at leisure.

Joe: How can you do a thing like this? Build up a little boy's hopes and smash all his dreams to pieces? You're an inhuman monster!

Wonka: I said, good day!

When Charlie gives up the gobstopper, he passes the test. By refusing to be driven by greed, bad manners and the like, but still honoring his onerous contracts, he wins the big prize: the entire factory, itself a metaphor for the entire dream-driven tech industry.

Slugworth, it is revealed, has been working for Wonka all along, debunking the rumors about hearty competition between the men, perhaps suggesting the tactics displayed by Microsoft in order to avoid being labeled a monopoly. It's noteworthy that Slugworth is the only other human in the factory.

The three go off to tour the rest of the factory once again, in an elevator called the Wonkavator. The Wonkavator can go in any direction. Just press a button. Clearly, it's a web browser. The faster it goes, the better — like bandwidth. Pressing the big red button takes them "home," or at least into flight over their city.

Why is it Charlie who inherits the factory? "A grownup would want to do everything his own way, not mine…. Don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted. What happened? He lived happily ever after."

For many underemployed liberal arts graduates like myself (at the time, anyway), the brand new world wide web was a rare chance to learn on the wing, to join a nascent "industry" before it became specialized, solidified, and grew (perhaps sensibly) cautious, encrusted with management and process and risk-aversion, and required certifications and degrees and all manner of other guarantees of competence and accountability.

Like Charlie Bucket with his golden ticket, many bought their way in with a copy of Teach Yourself HTML in a Week only to find a rewarding career and the promise of a prosperous life. Still others, slightly distracted from their MBA by a year at Sapient or Razorfish or CKS or one of the other web consultancies, went back to whatever they were doing before, like Violet to her gum. Some folks only saw money, like Augustus and his hunger for fudge. Others, like Mike Teavee, barely looked away from their obsessions long enough to make anything out of their experience with the web. And some, like Charlie, lived happily ever after.

Where is fancy bred, in the heart or in the head?

Published: May 31, 2005