The Sandbox Laboratory

Once upon a time, there was a giant sandbox. It was so big and deep that thousands of children could come to play. Each child and his playmates had plenty of sand. It was that way for several generations.

As time went on, the community grew and many more children came to play in the sandbox. They met and made new friends. Even though they didn't always speak the same, each knew how to play and build things with the sand. They made sandcastles and mud pies and they showed their creations and methods to each other. Not all their things were beautiful, but each was original.

Some children were content just to play and have fun. Others learned techniques to build better sand things. Some built big things to get the attention of their playmates. Big things take more sand and space and sometimes, that meant that not every child had enough sand to play with any more. Children could move to open parts of the sandbox; but soon, things got a bit crowded. The children with good upbringings learned to share the sand with their neighbors, even though they had different playmates. Other children were not so considerate-some were even bullies-and demanded their favorite spot in the sandbox, even when someone else was there first. Still others didn't care whether they took someone else's sand: They said it was theirs just as much as anyone's. Yet, there were distant parts of the sandbox where almost no one wanted to play because it was too far away.

Things got bad enough that children complained to their parents about the fighting. The parents got together and hired a sandbox monitor, who made some rules. When children abused their privileges, the monitor would punish the unruly children, sometimes even sending them home. That worked fine because the monitor was always there, watching the sandbox.

Later, the parents decided that they couldn't afford the monitor's salary any more and they cut his pay. The monitor curtailed his activities and told the children to watch themselves. To boost his income, he started selling parts of the sandbox, especially in the faraway corners where no one played. Some complained that it wasn't his to sell, but he sold it anyway and pocketed the money.

In the crowded part of the sandbox, the rules said that you could build certain kinds of sand things only in certain areas. Those rules were supposed to put compatible playmates together, which they did. But the well-mannered children wanted to build all kinds of things, too, and play with new things that no one had ever built before. Some teenagers came along and wanted to build big, new elaborate sand things and charge money for people to come see them. The monitor gave them huge chunks of the sandbox for free because he thought the parents wanted him to do that. He installed ashtrays and lounge chairs with drink holders there. The children's part of the sandbox was only a small fraction of the whole but they did their best to prevent losing more sand and to organize what they had.

The children got together and proclaimed that the old rules were holding them back. One part of the sandbox for building certain things wasn't nearly so crowded as the other part. They decided to allocate sand by size of thing, rather than by kind of thing. They put their proposal to the monitor, who asked all the children to comment.

One lonely child pointed out that once you leave the sandbox and go home, another child can come to play in your spot. The longer you stay in the sandbox, the longer you prevent another child from using that spot. Since the sandbox is deep, you can build a very tall sand thing without encroaching much on your neighbors, even though you're using a lot of sand. That child suggested that the valuable commodity was not just sand itself or space in the sandbox, but the product of sand and time divided by space. He went on to a different sandbox: engineering school.

Moral: Grow up. Yield to your neighbors by using as little sand (power) and space (bandwidth) as possible. The sandbox monitor didn't make a rule about time, but it's equally important-73, Doug Smith, KF6DX

Member Comments: