The industrial age challenged us to rethink the limits of the human body: Where does my body end and the tool begin? The digital age challenges us to rethink the limits of the human mind: What are the boundaries of my cognition?

It’s tragically ironic that the tagline for Douglas Rushkoff’s book incorporates an Old Testament reference to the Ten Commandments, since Rushkoff writes in his introduction that the Jewish race has, since the time of Moses, merely promoted an “enduring myth” where the contents of those stone tablets is concerned.

Regardless, Rushkoff’s perspective is fascinating and worth some contemplation:

• Are we just learning to use programs or are we learning to make programs?
• Do we favor the distracted over the focused, the automatic over the considered, and the contrary over the compassionate? Why?
• Do we merely grant our kids access to the capabilities given to them by others, or do we empower them to determine the value-creating capabilities of these technologies for themselves?
• Do we pursue new abilities, or do we fetishize new toys?
• Are we optimizing our machines for humanity, or are we optimizing humans for machinery?
• Do we think and behave differently when operating different technology as we do given different settings?
• Are we allowing computers and networks to discourage our more complex processes–our higher order cognition, contemplation, innovation, and meaning making–in addition to copying our intellectual processes (i.e. our repeatable programs)?

…and these are questions that arise after reading just the introductory chapter…

Apparently Rushkoff’s book grew from a short talk he has given on the subject, and there is substantial commentary to wade into just on the talk alone. [1][2]

Contemplation. Something that can all to easily become sacrificed on the altar of busyness. Something to fight for, protect and prize. Warmly embracing why.

Here’s to a 2011 that is more focused, considered and compassionate!

[1] http://rushkoff.com/2010/03/25/program-or-be-programmed/
[2] http://boingboing.net/2010/03/30/rushkoff-program-or.html

Several years ago, I blogged about how I winnowed atom-based content at that time. When I consider my increasingly digital life now, I smile at how out-dated that post seems.

Maybe some day I’ll let go of my hardcopy altogether and go 100% digital.

Almost two years after my winnowing (paper-based) content post, I briefly waxed sentimental about personal content management. Judging by that post’s imagery, I’m not sure how much “evolution” had actually occurred. I do know that the binders of paper were eventually tosed outright, but even a quick glance at my current technical library at home tells me that I have far from reached any “evolved” state.

As a visual person, I tend to value what I can see and tangibly interact with. Books present a particular challenge to me. A good book, in hard cover format especially, is immediately available to give to someone else as a loan or a gift (e.g. from one generation to the next). The same book in electronic format is more subject to the winds of technology (e.g. will there be a reader for this format? what all is required to actually read the book in terms of supporting hardware and software? etc.). On the other hand, if I took the time to bookmark or otherwise annotate paper, this could distract subsequent reading by others–electronic metadata should be more distinctly layered and separable from original content.

Given the choice between hunter or gatherer in a shopping context, I’m definitely a hunter. Put me in the middle of a men’s department or clothing store and I’ll happily panoramically scan the selection, deciding in mere seconds whether there is something for me (to killpurchase), or not. (Thankfully, my wife is my primary wardrobe consultant; so, my hunter instincts are necessarily balanced and muted. ) However, as much as I may be a hunter over clothes, I am a serious gatherer of books and music. Places like Barnes & Noble and Borders love guys like me.

So, you might think that my struggle over books (i.e. physical or digital) is a struggle I have with music, too. Perhaps, but I think that my music-as-content evolution is a bit more “advanced” and, therefore, may be informative.

Although I still buy physical CDs more than digital downloads, all of my music is immediately rendered in digital format and almost entirely consumed digitally thereafter. Going “essentially digital” has enabled me to take full advantage of classification software (e.g. MusicBrainz, freedb, etc.), playback software (e.g. Apple iTunes, Microsoft Zune, etc.), recommendation engines like Pandora, etc. and also various playback hardware (e.g. an Apple iDevice, laptop, PC, etc.). If I read the liner notes for an album, I do so once (typically after unwrapping the CD). From then on, interaction with music is based on bits rather than atoms (the occasional CD play through my high fidelity entertainment system notwithstanding).

Perhaps with the advent of The Undesigned Web, software like Instapaper, and hardware like iPad, etc., my interaction with reading material will tip to become predominantly digital. Certainly, as I use the Read Later feature of Instapaper, I find it to be a digital equivalent to my paper-based content winnowing approach from years ago. (Tapping into familiar workstreams is always an effective catalyst to change my behavior.)

…if I did go digital my office would be too Spartan.

Actually, I think another contributing factor to my attempt at balancing the gathering of atoms with gathering bits instead is the fact that there is limited physical space to house either. Today, it’s not really a concern over becoming Spartan, it’s about using limited wall and desktop space to display physical items of the greatest value (e.g. family photos, art, sculpture, etc.).

Just like I’m able to visualize the “height” (or “depth”) of, say, my iPod (i.e. the number of digitized albums stored in terms of a stack of CD cases), I’m beginning to visualize my iPad in a similar manner (i.e. in terms of the stack of print magazines and books available electronically instead). Virtually speaking, such devices “fill a room.”

Who knows, I may just have to invest in my own book scanner to help free up some shelf space…

Last month I read In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing and am finally posting my thoughts on this book by Matthew May.

First of all, it’s a well-written book that applies its message to itself.

I’m glad that I found it after my previous read, since it covers similar ground in places as does Subject To Change but ends up exploring different vistas, too. As a matter of fact, I can relate the contents of this book to several previous reads, and In Pursuit of Elegance has refined my thinking drawn from past reading through deeper correlation and, well, elegance.

“To find elegance, you must appreciate, embrace, and then travel beyond complexity.” The pursuit of elegance is more like chess than checkers. Elegance is “far side,” not “near side,” simplicity; it is at once symmetrical, seductive, subtractive and sustainable.

Concerning this book’s refining effect, take the somewhat popular subject of kaizen–a principle and a practice of “change for the better.” A student of kaizen creates a standard, follows it, and finds a better way. A student of kaizen understands that there are two types of work: value-adding and non-value-adding. In the pursuit of value-adding work, one must be wary of muri (overload), mura (inconsistency), and muda (waste).

Up to this point, I focused more on muda (waste) as a concern, drawing from lessons learned in The Machine That Changed the World while contemplating software factories. However, May writes: “Muda is the easiest to target because it is generally more visible. But muri and mura are often the more evil of the sins, as they can be the actual cause of all muda.” Yes, of course!

Taiichi Ohno, Toyota engineering pioneer and the man behind kaizen, taught his colleagues that new thoughts and better ideas do not come out of the blue, they come from a true understanding of the process. [Aside: Developing and applying empathy is an important theme in Subject To Change.] Writes May: “By requiring keen observation before action, by demanding that one look beyond the obvious surface symptoms to better see the deeper causes, by never giving answers and only asking questions, Ohno taught people to stop and think.”

Make decisions that are based on observation, not assumption (or necessarily inference alone). Therefore, actively form your mental model through firsthand observation (empathy) to ask “What is possible?;” don’t passively succumb to the “ladder of inference” and prematurely ask “What should be done?”

I recently finished reading Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World, and I can recommend this book to anyone who wants, for example, to build software that resonates with its users.

Here are a list of thoughts and quotes this read produced:

• Empathy is an understanding of a person or group’s subjective experience by sharing that experience vicariously that can be developed and cultivated through practice (i.e. it’s not innate). Using your sense of empathy can help you focus on the experience you want to deliver in a manner that is effective for those who will engage with it. Don’t confuse customer briefings with developing customer-focused empathy; there’s more to it!
• Experience accounts for motivations, expectations, perceptions, abilities, flow, and culture.
• Parity isn’t a strategy; neither is being the best.
• Don’t craft the story of a product in isolation form the actual creation of that product.
• Human life is complex–embrace this reality; don’t ignore it. Capture complexity with qualitative research (e.g. conduct interviews to elicit stories about experiences). Differentiate process (i.e. the how and why) from outcomes (i.e. the what, where, and when).
• Sometimes experience strategy isn’t about hiding complexity as much as it’s about managing it (e.g. distribute complexity across a system so as not to overwhelm at any particular point). That is, the overall experience should never become too complex. There needs to be coordination among the experiences touch points, allowing each to fully exhibit its strengths.
• “You have to recognize that a system will degrade, and make it such that such entropy doesn’t shatter the entire experience. The true success of experience design isn’t how well it works when everything is operating as planned, but how well it works when things start going wrong.” For example, provide meaningful seams into which people can insert themselves (i.e. leave an impression).
• Great experience is difficult to plan for, and almost impossible to specify.
• Good experiences require systematic coordination with the customer in mind (i.e. a focus on qualitative customer insights).
• “Design is a way of approaching problem solving, decision making, and strategy planning that can yield better outcomes.”
• “[Design-centric organizations] peer into the needs and desires of their customers, identify patterns of behavior, refine ideas that tap into those behaviors, then push into the unknown–or at least the uncertain.” -Roger Martin
• “You can’t build a design competency overnight; it requires difficult changes in process, skills, and perhaps most importantly, culture.”
• In my development organization we deploy a risk-driven iterative development process, with phases we call inception, elaboration, construction and transition. I’d liked the book’s description of “the fuzzy front end,” which I would liken to inception (e.g. “anticipation exceeds insight”).
• “Good ideas need to fail early and often so you can arrive sooner at a great one.” Process won’t turn mundane ideas into stars–nor will great effort (strong execution). Therefore, avoid premature execution of an idea. For example, presuppose multiple solutions and suggest alternatives based on partial data. Define constraints that drive great solutions (e.g. think like a newbie, leverage empathy (that you’re developing, right? ).
• “Strategy should bring clarity to an organization; it should be a signpost for showing people where you, as their leader, are taking them–and what they need to do to get there…. People need to have a visceral understanding–an image in their minds–of why you’ve chosen a certain strategy and what you’re attempting to create with it…. Because it’s pictorial, design describes the world in a way that’s not open to many interpretations.” -Tim Brown

On Monday, I noted 11 years with EMC (via its acquisition of Documentum). I can certainly say that “change happens” in the content management space and my own career.

My first engineering responsibilities were centered around the Documentum Desktop (aka Desktop Client) offering–client/server architecture implemented as a mixture of C++ and VB. Then I was called on to drive the first major release of WDK, a web-based application implemented in Java, JSP, HTML and XML. Next stop: creating an integration bridge between Documentum and authoring environments like Office, Adobe and XML editors (i.e. Application Connectors), which was specified as an N-tier architecture implemented as a mixture of C# (on the desktop) and Java (on the middle tier. Currently I’m focused on providing a rich set of services (i.e. local Java APIs, WSDL-based web services and RESTful web services) that drive a diverse set of applications, each with its own presentation layer technology decisions (e.g. Flash/Flex, ExtJS/DWR, etc.).

And “tomorrow” this will all be subject to change once again…

I finished reading Nicholas Carr‘s The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google back in June, but am just now getting to blogging my thoughts on this book. Something about shipping software…

Carr carefully recounts how the electrical industry evolved, and focused on the personalities of early central players such as Thomas Edison and Samuel Insull, as if to personify the computing industry into those “DC like” and those “AC like.”

As I read this book, my thoughts centered mostly around the nature of centralized and distributed systems, and around the human desire to control and to be emancipated.

A frequently recurring conversation I have with ECM customers, concerns centralized versus distributed systems. Often this discussion is about delivering the right façades to satisfy the needs of a particular role (e.g. supporting centralized auditing and compliance functions for systems administrators, empowering line of business users via delegated (edge) administration, including user/group management, etc.).

While I get that switch refers to electricity (i.e. a light switch), I wonder if a better metaphor would involve a dial or a set of dials. I think that software delivery is becoming more adaptive and less binary (i.e. on premise and hosted, not or).

I’m reminded of the following visual by my colleague Michael Hackney that I sometimes refer to as “dialed in” software:

There are, of course, more variables (rows) than those listed above, including whether software runs on premise or is hosted (i.e. delivered as a service). I talk with customers who require unstructured content to be managed on premise and delivered via software as a service. So, I guess I take some issue with the binary nature of a switch metaphor.

As a software architect building enterprise software for such adaptation, I think about the subtle ways our perceptions, ideas, and language change whenever we begin using a new tool (e.g. writing software for a so-called cloud environment). Consider the difference between the emphases of the printed page versus the web page:

• Printed page – emphasizes logic, sequence, history, exposition, objectivity, detachment and discipline
• Web page – emphasizes immediacy, simultaneity, contingency, subjectivity, disposability and speed

Here are a few more thoughts about this kind of transformation and disruption that cloud computing can yield:

• Carr’s chapter, “The Great Unbundling,” talks to some of my thoughts in this blog [1] [2].
• Does unbundling and re-bundling of content–a form of personalization and reuse–amplify isolation or promote knowledge sharing? Am I inclined to go beyond a particular filter even if my initial need is satisfied, or do shield (block) myself from more meaningful collaboration and thought instead (i.e. divide knowledge and magnify it according to differences, content balkanization, content polarization, etc.)?
• What are the social consequences of pervasive content (i.e. content always at my fingertips)? (I’m already a bit frustrated with my Blackberry-slinging friends who feel compelled to thumb through incoming email despite being in face-to-face meetings with others.)
• Advances in IT that weaken central control, inevitably are followed by a reassertion of control. That is, control… disruption… reassertion… (repeat).
• On the Web, anonymity is just a false façade (illusion). So, does that mean the Internet can become an “integrity catalyst”?
• Consider the value of distributed content services (i.e. bringing services to content and also content to services) in light of Eric Schmidt’s statement, “When the network becomes as fast as the processor, the computer hollows out and spreads across the network.”
• Trust takes on special meaning where reliability, scalability, responsiveness (both software and customer service)
• Capacity planning becomes even more important (i.e. knowing how a function/feature contributes load, establishing the right model and metadata to track demand, load and diversity factors).
• Parallel processing and virtualization become powerful ways to deal with narrow application sets (e.g. Google) and wide application sets (e.g. Amazon), respectively.
• Let’s say that collective intelligence is something to generally foster in a consumer or corporate environment and that something fostering collective intelligence is “green.” Then how green is your content and your content services? For example, instead of just performing calculations or executing queries, does your content (services) contribute to collective “sense making” (i.e. providing answers without knowing questions), to increased knowledge sharing (explicitly and implicitly), etc.?

Lastly, as you might imagine, there have been a number of other reviews of this book. Here are a few I found interesting:

• Charles Fitzgerald (now with EMC via its Pi Corp. acquisition, after being a GM of platform strategy at Microsoft) – who reminds us of the power of reinvention (e.g. Edison and General Electric)
• Ross Mayfield – who raises issues of perception and subjective value given his work with customers at Socialtext
• Tim Bray – who does a nice job of outlining Carr’s work and validating its engaging nature (by taking the time to blog despite personal bias)
• Chuck Hollis – who emphasizes the thought-provoking nature of Carr’s work and who leveraged his interview with Carr to discuss “how,” not “if”

Update 12/1/2008: For more of my book reviews and to see what else is in my book library (i.e. just the business-related or software-related non-fiction therein), please visit my Books page.

During a recent Charlie Rose interview with Peter Chernin, the subject of media formats came up, which reminded me of an earlier question I raised, “What is the natural unit of written collaboration?” When I mused upon this question it was in the context of documents and written content. I hadn’t really thought about so-called rich media (interactive) content.

So, what is the natural unit of such content?

Mr. Chernin remarked that the movie, the hour-long drama and the half-hour comedy are all resilient forms of content–and he would hope so given his responsibilities at News Corp. He also sees new forms emerging–all shorts, if you will: five, ten and 15 minute segments, depending on one’s context (e.g. watch on your smart phone while waiting for public transportation).

I recall the following quote from Mr. Chernin: “In a world of infinite choice, mediocrity is death.” (More quotes are captured here, for example.) Or, aim to stand out. Speaking of short films and excellence, Pixar’s Presto, which plays before WALL-E, is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in a movie theater.

Anyway, back to new forms of interactive content… Content reuse is something I build software to promote based on conversations with customers. During this interview, I couldn’t help but to think that there is a real opportunity here for software to support the production of variously sized shorts from full originals in such a way as to retain, if not amplify, the essence of the first edition.

Enter seam carving.

I found a seam carving implementation by Mike Swanson called Seamonster. This led me to a paper by seam carving’s creators, Dr. Shai Avidan and Dr. Ariel Shamir: Seam Carving for Content-Aware Image Resizing.

As the author’s note, without additional “higher level cues.” seam carving doesn’t work on all images. Nevertheless, the relatively straightforward nature of seam carving causes me to wonder if similar techniques can be applied to video, audio and even text.

This later work describes video application of seam carving. It appears, upon first glance, that a key to application is what Avidan and Shamir call energy criteria (e.g. the notion of forward energy in a video context).

What are the key energy criteria for audio files? What are the key energy criteria for documents? What artifacts should be anticipated when applying seam carving to various media and how can they be mitigated, if not avoided altogether?

I need to investigate seam carving in more detail. All resource pointers are much appreciated.

Scott Berkun’s The Myths of Innovation is a refreshingly unpretentious read–one that I accomplished straightaway in an afternoon (off).

Here are my takeaways–all quotes are Scott’s unless explicitly noted otherwise:

• Innovation as an accumulation of smaller insights…connecting pieces…realizing picture (puzzle); therefore, take action to enable insights to occur more freely.
• Work passionately and take breaks to let the mind wander and the allow the subconscious to work on our behalf.
• Epiphany as an occasional bonus of working on tough problems
• “It is an achievement to find a great idea, but it is a greater one to successfully use it to improve the world.”
• “The secret tragedy of innovators is that their desire to improve the world is rarely matched by support from the people they hope to help.”
• “The greater the potential of an idea, the harder it is to find anyone willing to try it.”
• “Innovative idea are rarely rejected on their merits; they’re rejected because of how they make people feel.”
• Is your desire to find new ideas to conquer greater than your desire to protect the success you already have?
• “Wise innovators–driven by passion more than ego–initiate partnerships, collaborations, and humble studies of the past, raising their odds against the timeless challenges of innovation.”
• Imagination > Knowledge > Information

• I’ve put knowledge above information for some time know, but Albert Einstein’s belief that “imagination is more important than knowledge” (stated on page 83) captured my attention.
• How can content-centric applications do a better job of capturing the user’s imagination, let alone increate the knowledge derivative?

• Actually commit reminds me of something U2 bassist Adam Clayton said while being interviewed on the How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb DVD. His comments are captured here, although I recall them to be slightly different on the DVD.
• A group of people, a team or a band, has to commit before any real business can take place. Too often I see groups form for one reason or another without mutual commitment, and typically it’s just a matter of time until they disband, leaving some frustrated and others numb.

• “What problems does this innovation solve? Whose problems are they?”
• “What problems does this innovation create? Whose problems are they?”

Update 12/1/2008: For more of my book reviews and to see what else is in my book library (i.e. just the business-related or software-related non-fiction therein), please visit my Books page.

I just finished watching Charlie Rose’s interview of Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos on PBS. Most of the conversation focused on Kindle: Amazon’s Wireless Reading Device, an amazing new device that embodies a vision to improve the act of reading. Kindle was the chosen product name specifically because it means to start a fire. The creative fires surrounding authoring, publishing and reading are certainly stoked by the arrival of this device.

Charlie Rose has got to be one of the best connected persons in the world.

Part of his paradigm–appropriate given his profession–is that questions are important. So, Charlie asked Jeff what question the Kindle seeks to answer. Jeff replied something as follows: “How can the act of reading be improved? How can a the essence of a book be improved?”

Q: What is the most important aspect of a book? A: It disappears. That is, when you start to read a long form, well written text, you enter the world of the author. Paper and ink fade away; the book disappears.

Jeff went on to say that you “can’t ‘out book’ a book.” There are aspects of books that cannot be improved upon. So Kindle doesn’t attempt to outshine such qualities of books but rather focuses on what physical books cannot do.

Nearly 90,000 books today can be delivered to Kindle, which can store up to 200 books, yet weighs less than the average book at slightly more than 10 ounces. I probably own more books than I can pack into a Kindle, but I assure you that I can’t carry my personal library either!

Jeff expects devices like Kindle to become platforms for experimentation, and he very quickly remarked that most experiments will fail. However, experimentation benefits everyone by uncovering the unforeseen challenges, creating new choices, lowering access barriers, etc.

I appreciate that Kindle has been under development for the past three years. Kindle represents a bet by Amazon’s leadership that all of the required technology would be commercially available in time for today’s public launch (e.g. the paper-like display, 10 years in the lab). It’s a fine example of calculating risk-taking as well as, what appears to be the reasonable expectation of a rewarding commercial future.

Paul Graham’s essay last month, “Stuff,” really resonates with me. I strongly encourage you to take a few minutes and go read it. Good, isn’t it?!

Stuff appears to be a key contributing factor to the commoditization–er, evaporation–of my time. In fact, I can effectively replace “stuff” with “information” in Paul’s essay and feel equally downtrodden. I’m overwhelmed with information, probably just like you are.

To paraphrase and personalize some of Paul’s points:

• Information has gotten a lot cheaper, but my attitude toward it hasn’t changed correspondingly. I overvalue information.
• Once I’ve accumulated a certain amount of information, it starts to own me rather than the other way around.
• A cluttered room [or computer file system or feed aggregator or ...] is literally exhausting.
• Another way to resist acquiring information is to think of the overall cost of owning [or even just managing] it. The purchase price [or initial download, even free] is just the beginning. I’m going to have to think about the thing for years–perhaps even for the rest of your life. Every thing you own takes energy away from you. Some give more than they take. Those are the only things worth having.

I’m known to be a packrat, which has certainly saved me and others in the past. However, the burden that comes with this mountain of information (stuff) is wearing. Techniques I’ve described before end up involved more about paying in time lost than in real value gained (i.e. organization for no apparent long-term benefit).

Earlier this week I was meeting with several EMC colleagues to discuss the whole REST/POX/SOAP/RPC/SOA/ROA(/DOA) thing. During this candid discussion–a good subject for another post–someone remarked, and I’m paraphrasing, “Forget about organization; focus on good search. Organization is an intractable problem, and one that no one is willing to pay for to solve properly.” This gave me pause…so, how do I leverage search on the web and on my desktop? Has search truly replaced navigation for me? If not, why?

Back to Paul’s essay and the realization that I may overvalue information, I got to thinking about physical books, digital books and links to books online. Paper is pleasant to hold and read, but it can burn and consumes shelf space. PDFs are fine on a big display, but they require software to read (albeit free) and additional electronic storage themselves–not to mention that they’re fixed/frozen, not dynamic/living, in nature. Links consume far less storage then documents on my hard drive–even nothing when placed into del.icio.us–but they can break or become useful when my ISP decides to disappear. When I go offline, how do I access a particular document given only a link? When I’m away from my computer, PDA, smart phone, etc. how do I read my softcopy document? When I’m away from my home library and a nearby book seller, how do I thumb through a certain chapter for that particular key phrase or figure?

Given all my questions, I need something empirical to help me to change my ways. Ironically, it seems like more data could help my information overload.

The kind of data I’m currently envisioning represents the number of browse, read and write related actions upon sets of electronic documents. For example, if I navigate to a folder that contains two documents but do nothing more, then each document gets a +1 in the browse column. If I navigate here again and open one of the documents, both documents get another +1 for browse and the opened document gets a +1 in the read column, too. If I edit the open document and save my changes, then that document also receives a +1 in the write column.

I say “columns” to represent this metadata due to my leverage of a useful Windows Explorer add-in (i.e. shell namespace extension), Folder Size for Windows, which presents a new Folder Size column within the main file system navigator:

On the other hand, I’m not sure that adding three columns of numbers would be terribly useful.

Fortunately there are lots of ways to project this kind of information. I circulated Visual Literacy’s A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods amongst my colleagues at work back in May and it garnered a fair bit of praise and admiration. More recently, Jeff Atwood blogged more generally about catalogs of data visualization. For example, maybe I could apply Crazy Egg‘s ”heat map” concept.

Perhaps I’m simply over-engineering the whole thing.

Taking a step back and returning to Paul’s essay, the following paragraph may represent the simplest way to my information tranquility:

A friend of mine cured herself of a clothes buying habit by asking herself before she bought anything “Am I going to wear this all the time?” If she couldn’t convince herself that something she was thinking of buying would become one of those few things she wore all the time, she wouldn’t buy it. I think that would work for any kind of purchase. Before you buy anything, ask yourself: will this be something I use constantly? Or is it just something nice? Or worse still, a mere bargain?

I’ve successfully applied this practice to physical books and music CD’s–I’m a sucker for both–but I’ve got a long way to go where general downloading and filing is concerned.

Update 8/24/2007: Not that TreeMaps are necessarily ideal, but I ran across a TreeMap-based disk drive content visualization software for Windows and MacOS recently: SequoiaView (Windows) and Disk Inventory X (MacOS).