From: cyberoid@u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson)
Subject: SOC: "Make everyone on earth SEE things your way."  Really?
Date: 4 Sep 1995 19:55:59 GMT
Organization: Worldesign Inc., Seattle


From cyberoid@u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson)

A prominent full-page advertisement by Silicon Graphics Inc. in the
WALL STREET JOURNAL caught my eye.  No, more than that: it glared at
me with an eye of its own, a Big Brotheresque image that offers me
 
	...a machine that makes everyone on earth
                   SEE things your way.
 
Wow.  Everthing, I thought?  The ad continued:
 
	Think of what you could do.
 
	With such a machine, you would have complete 
	powers of persuasion, at your fingertips.
 
"The *complete* power to persuade, to make people see things my way."
That's a tempting prize to offer up to the kings of commerce.  What
corporate CEO wouldn't want the "complete powers of persuasion" at his
or her fingertips?
 
As we in the virtual worlds field know too well, no computing machine
available today outputs more than pretty pictures and sound.  The
"realities" we can craft on computers are still less compelling than
our experiences in the material world.  But consider the social
conditions in which we live.  For most people, personal experiences
are becoming more routine, less rich.  Fully 80 percent of Americans
are never admitted to higher education or another institution wherein
they might acquire critical-thinking skills.  In less-developed
countries, the situation is more extreme.  In these conditions, for
most individuals, computer-generated pictures may very well come to
stand in for what is happening the real world.  It's a fearsome
thought.
 
Is this the type of enterprise to which we want to be recruited, in
which the power of computing derives not from building understanding
but rather from bringing people into alignment?  Foot soldiers in the
campaign of the technology-rich versus the technology-poor?
 
"Make everyone on earth SEE things your way."  What about other ways
of seeing?  For a thousand years the Church, using that era's tools of
persuasion (faith and exclusionary access to knowledge) and compulsion
(stocks and the personal bonfire), successfully tried to make everyone
on earth see things its way.  Only a change in the political
leadership in Europe, and the emergence of more powerful technology of
knowledge and understanding -- science -- created the possibility for
truth to emerge.  In the meantime, the toll taken among the
truthseekers was brutal.
 
Does the advertisement advocate building a similar bulwark against
understanding, employing the modern tools of persuasion and
compulsion?  This goal is implied.
 
There is right now a backlash against the "virtual," in books,
magazine articles, and academic conferences blasting the creation of
an unreal world; and in popular opinion.  There is behind these
expressions a righteous fear of delusion, of literally "losing our
collective mind."  There's enough circumstantial evidence to make a
case: witness our obsession in the U.S. with celebrity and corporate
shenanigans while the overall quality of life for most families
continues in sharp decline The "SEE things your way" advertisement --
the ultimate megalomaniac appeal -- will only exacerbate these
concerns.  Maybe it should.  But can we afford it?
 
Of course, in large respects, this message is a myth.  Graphics
workstations can't do all the things claimed for them, not now.  Also,
a line must be drawn between a company and the message its ad agency
promulgates.  SGI makes great workstations and increasingly is taking
a welcome role as a leader in our industry.  It is only beginning to
exert on national culture the influence long exercised by AT&T, IBM,
Microsoft, and other corporate megaliths.  But if this message is
indicative of where we are going in the virtual worlds field, maybe we
should take a second look.
 
What do others think?  If you've seen the advertisement, what thoughts
and feelings did it inspire in you?
 
Bob Jacobson
Worldesign Inc.
Seattle