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Lego's online dream
1 February 2001

A Microsoft alliance is one way to regain the interest of tech-savvy kids, says Chloe Veltman

In Douglas Coupland's 1995 novel Microserfs, a bunch of 20-something computer programmers flee their jobs at Microsoft Seattle to set up a company called Oops! in Silicon Valley. Short for object oriented programming system, Oops! is described as "virtual Lego - a bottomless box of 3D Lego-type bricks that runs on IBM or Mac platforms."

It is nearly six years since Coupland's Lego-inspired heroes made their bold getaway from Bill Gates' fold, but if Oops! were a real company and had survived the dotcom crash thus far, its founders might sense something ironic about Microsoft's recently announced alliance with Lego.

On January 10, the two companies announced the "shared dream" of developing joint products and services. As part of the deal, which some analysts label timely considering the toy-maker's expected loss of 500m kroner (£40m) for 2000, Microsoft applications will run on Lego's website and Lego will develop games for the technology conglomerate's new Xbox games console, Microsoft's retort to Sega and Sony.

Lego has come a long way since its wholesome beginnings as a family run manufacturer of wooden toys in Billund, Denmark. Master carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen founded the company in 1932, coining the term Lego from two Danish words: LEg GOdt, meaning "play well". By the time the plastic brick came out in 1949, Lego was becoming a phenomenon in Denmark.

The Lego Company now ranks among the top five makers of children's products worldwide, its empire spreading beyond colourful kits to clothes, Harry Potter and three theme parks. "There are 52 Lego bricks to every person in the world," says Danielle Hainauer, head of public relations for Lego Europe north.

But Lego's success story is not spotless. Two years ago, the company suffered the first financial loss in its history, owing to today's tech-savvy kids plumping for the virtual world of the computer game over Lego's lively building blocks. "Kids are getting older younger, so it's not just about producing classic play materials any more," says Hainauer.

Focused upon becoming, in company rhetoric, "the strongest brand for families and children by 2005", Lego's widespread cross-branding efforts look like a reasonable way to recoup recent losses and recapture the interests of the fickle children's market.

Following a successful franchise of the Star Wars brand, Lego has won the rights to work its magic on Harry Potter. The company has developed a movie-making kit for children, Lego Studios, in conjunction with Steven Spielberg and has just launched Lego INmotion, an in-car play-station, with Johnson's Controls, a leading designer of car interiors.

For some of Lego's older fans, the partnership with other companies, and especially with Microsoft, is a cause for concern. "A lot of people are worried that the Lego Company is spreading itself too thin," says Todd Lehman, founder of Lugnet, the web-based global community of Lego users. "Lego has always represented quality and high moral standards and many Lego fans feel that Microsoft is only interested in making money."

Lego might be focusing on building its brand right now, but its relationship with technology is more profound than its liaisons with a few household names. Ever since Lego financed the development of the "intelligent" brick at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1980s, an adult crowd of nostalgic high- tech Lego users have played with the souped-up Mindstorms robotics kits as passionately as they played with space Lego when they were kids. But as Mitchel Resnick, Lego Pappert Professor at MIT is quick to point out, "there's a great deal of technology in even the simplest Lego brick".

With the rise of online communities such as Lugnet.com, and the smooth circulation of Lego parts through eBay and the specialist Lego exchange BrickBay, people have been able to share ideas and build more creatively than ever. Lego has become a staple in the creative process for artists and scientists alike. "Lego produces great raw materials and the fans constantly create new ways of using the bricks," says Lehman.

Larry Page, the 28-year-old boss of Google, the search engine, built himself an inkjet printer out of Lego, while Yali Friedman, a Canadian biochemistry PhD student, used a Lego model to explain on television the structure of DNA. Eric Harshbarger, a 30-year-old computer programmer and Lego sculptor from Alabama, has created life-sized sculptures out of Lego, from a full-length desk for a corporate client to a Lego version of Bart Simpson, while computer consultant Jason Rowoldt makes hour-long movies using Lego with his company BrickFilms.

The Lego Company itself has been instrumental in supporting the technological endeavours of its customers. For Harshbarger, the company's decision to sell Lego bricks in bulk online has made his job as a large-scale Lego sculptor much easier. Rowoldt, 25, describes Lego's plan to enable customers to create and order their own custom-made sets online as "every Lego fan's dream".

On the educational side, a new partnership between Lego and First, a non-profit organisation concerned with establishing an interest in science and engineering in young people, aims to teach children about technology through a national robotics competition for nine to 14 year-olds.

Perhaps most intriguing is the Lego Company's attitude towards hackers. No sooner had the first Mindstorms kit appeared on toy store shelves in 1998 than a student had hacked into the program, reverse-engineered it and posted his work on the internet. "We could have gone after that person from a propriety point of view," says Michael McNally, Lego's public relations manager for the Americas, "but we decided to encourage a dialogue with hackers instead".

Since then, hackers have created new programs for Mindstorms, generating a community of robotics enthusiasts, creating new capabilities for Lego's products and attracting revenue for the company. Lego has posted a free downloadable version of the developers kit on its web-site and several books have been published on programming Mindstorms, including Ralph Hempel's Advanced Guide To Lego Mindstorms and Jonathan Knudsen's Unofficial Guide To Lego Mindstorms. "Lego has been phenomenally receptive to people experimenting with their software. They are a credit to the open-source movement," says Harshbarger.

"Technology has created a huge paradigm shift for the traditional, family owned company that had been manufacturing plastics for 50 years," says Knudsen. Yet according to Douglas Coupland, Lego may have a great deal further to go before it realises even a modicum of its potential: "In a thousand years from now, Lego will have done more to influence the thinking of a lot of people and the look of the physical world than pretty well any other invention," said the Microserfs author in an interview for Danish national television. That remains to be seen, but in the meantime, be careful not to trip over passing droids in the street and watch out for the giant robotic cockroach programmed to tickle you in bed.