ONLINE AUCTIONS
"I got an Enigma," brags Bran Ferren, the president for research and development at Walt Disney Imagineering. Ferren, enigmatically enough, is standing in front of a laptop checking prices on techie souvenirs at the leading online auction site, whose name he prefers not to mention. The Enigma in question, of course, is a rare World War II-era encryption device used by the German military - the same contraption fellow collector Nathan Myrhvold ferreted out from an offline dealer. When Ferren saw it on the auction site, he was hooked.
Along with the Enigma machine, Ferren has been buying other technological oddities on the site, including a little bottle of deuterium oxide, or heavy water, which is used in nuclear reactors; a "beautiful" Norden bomb sight, capable of performing complex mechanical calculations; and a can of nuclear emergency survival fruitcake, designed to be edible after decades of storage.
In fact, one way to read Amazon.com's recent entry into the auction business is as a big-moneyed salute to the unbridled, if slightly eclectic, enthusiasm of online bidders. For his part, Ferren, who directs the thinking about the future at Disney, sees online auctions as one of the most significant Internet applications to come along since email. The digital swap meets point to genuinely new forms of human relationships, based on remote, dynamic cooperation. Ferren predicts these new relationships will not only prove more significant than the tired clichés of today's Web browsers, but will outlast computers themselves. He hopes electronic information devices will be available for implant directly into our bodies within 25 years; meanwhile, the online auction sites offer a good vantage point to observe the networked future "as we wait for this computer thing to blow over."
But while he waits out the petty hardware phase of the digital revolution, why does he insist on keeping secret the name of the marketplace? As a loyal participant in the tightly knit community of dynamic relationships overseen by CEO Michael Eisner, the red-bearded Imagineer is forbidden to talk up businesses not currently controlled by, or in cahoots with, The Mouse. And harmony in the Magic Kingdom is directly relevant to his auction addiction. "At a certain point," he says, "auction buying gets a little expensive, and you either have to calm down or hope Disney's stock goes up."
Gary Wolf
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