If we were sitting in a bar or coffee shop right now, I would launch into an occasionally funny, occasionally sad story about how I came to be infected with a nasty virus earlier this week. When I say 'I' here I mean 'it'. It is a computer. It got the virus. The biological me thankfully did not. In conversation, I often use the anorak form of the word 'I'. For example 'I am low on disk space' or 'I cannot open that file you sent me'. Scary, isn't it?

To cut to the chase, my virus meltdown recovery mechanism involved taking one infected Windows 2000 machine off the network and replacing it with a second, clean Windows 2000 machine. This got me back on the Internet, removing that horrible marooned-on-a-desert-island feeling that comes with lack of Internet access. It also allowed me to isolate the infected machine and don the plastic gloves to administer a full-on cavity search at a more leisurely pace.

The replacement machine is a few years old at this stage. You would not need to look at it to find that out. All you would need to do is listen. It is noisy. Compared to the machine it replaced, it is very noisy. Every time the hard disk is read/written, that unmistakable hard disk sound (box cutter-on-ice blended with sandpaper-on-windscreen) wafts across the room.

Perhaps I am just overly sensitized to noise differences. I drive a small diesel powered car. It is noisy. Really, really noisy. Noisy enough to scatter the crows from nearby treetops. When I drive my wife's car it is practically silent by comparison. Silent enough to attract stray cats seeking safety, warmth and shelter when the hand brake is on. Silent enough to house a meditating monk. At least to my ears.

Come to think of it, our current washing machine is much quieter that its predecessor. The same goes for the lawnmower, the coffee grinder, the vacuum cleaner... Am I nuts or is technology getting increasingly silent?

Back to my infected Windows machine. It acts as my gateway to the Internet on my home network. I first noticed that something was not right when my laptop began taking ages to send emails via the Windows 2000 machine. After a half dozen false diagnoses about the cause of the problem (four of them sad, two of them funny) I finally got around to peeking at the Internet gateway machine. Packets where whizzing to and fro yet there was no traffic that I had initiated. The hard disk light, hidden behind my copy of Semiotics For The Complete Idiot, was flashing like crazy.

From there I looked at the list of running processes. I found a few that were clearly not acting in my best interest. I killed a few and watched the traffic drop. I rebooted, watched them reappear, watched the traffic levels rise again and watched the hard disk light start rapping again. Diagnosis complete.

I suspect, though I cannot be sure, that my replacement Windows 2000 machine would have provided an auditory warning that something was amiss, leading to a faster diagnosis of the problem. As the virus/worm processes kicked into action, the hard disk light of my newer Windows 2000 machine flashed but I could not see the light as it was hidden behind a book. In my old Windows 2000 machine it would not only have flashed, it would have made a noise too. Would the noise have caught my attention? I think so.

Whatever the realities of this specific case, my point is this: noise can be useful. In the past, hard disks in particular made a lot of noise because, well, because they did. The noise was not a by-product of a conscious design decision to build an auditory activity meter into the device. The noise was a by-product of the technology used at the time. As technology has improved, the noise levels have dropped. Perhaps the example that speaks loudest is the humble USB key. A 'hard disk' without any moving parts whatsoever. Pure silent running.

Sure, all the gadgets have flashing lights but the trouble with flashing lights is that all it takes is an unfortunate cable routing or empty pizza box to mask the visual cue. Noise is harder to mask and consequently, for the purposes of an activity meter, more reliable in a working environment.

We are losing something in the inexorable reduction in noise in electronics. Every noise producing gadget that is replaced with a silent running alternative, increases the problem.

The only noise level rising in your average machine room is the unmistakable sound of engineers scratching their heads trying to diagnose the sources of faults.

ITworld.com, Ebusiness in the Enterprise

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