From: cyberoid@u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) Subject: Re: ANNOUNCE: Silicon Graphics appoints VR Evangelist Date: 8 Feb 1996 18:51:27 GMT Organization: University of Washington, Seattle I've got some bones to pick with this otherwise promising statement of intent.... -------------------------------------------------------------------- In article <9602061627.ZM2291@vrguru.asd.sgi.com>, Linda Jacobson wrote (in excerpts): >"In keeping with Silicon Graphics defacto position as the leading >supplier of VR technology," said David E. Orton, vice president and >general manager of Silicon Graphics' Advanced Systems Division, "we >are extremely pleased that Linda Jacobson has come on board to drive >our VR strategy and untangle public confusion about what VR is and >what it isn't." Hooray! It's about time. But what's this "public confusion" that SGI is taking upon itself to clear up? Have the rest of us not been doing our jobs very well? >The position of Evangelist is a first for Silicon Graphics. There is >no comparable position within the company to serve as a reference for >Ms. Jacobson's role. Virtual reality is a field full of hype, >confusion, and much misinformation. At the same time, it is a user >interface technology that promises to make human interactions with >computers more natural, effective, and powerful. Why the emphasis on the hype rather than the technology's power? I noticed the other day I was cringing making some claims for the value of network-based VR and my prospective customer, a large travel firm, looked at me oddly and said, "If *you* feel that ambivalent, why should *I* be talking with you? I'm here because *I* believe!" Good point. We either sh*t or get off the can, as they say in the more remote regions of Seattle. Please be an evangelist for hope and promise, not negativity and caution. We're in the marketplace and must start delivering, not tinkering in the lab to achieve the 99th percentile of perfection. My clients want to hear "can do!", whatever we have to do get there. We may even have some early failures: the price of success. >While very exciting, VR hype has far exceeded the ability of the >current technology to deliver, resulting in tremendous concern about >the practicality and safety of this new technology. Does it help to keep reiterating this point? Haven't we been contrite long enough? It's time for some strokes for what we have accomplished. >Now, with Ms. Jacobson as Silicon Graphics emissary, no company will >have more of an impact on bringing virtual reality technology into the >mainstream of computing, safely and effectively. Linda is an asset, but we're no longer a one-company industry. Worldesign, for example, has gotten a lot of good support from Sun in partnership with Netscape on the Net-based VR front and HP seems eager to continue its developments with Division. Intergraph's Pentium box is a hot performer in the 3D computing field and even beleaguered Apple, for goodness sake, seems committed to knocking down a few low-end barriers with its various new versions of Quicktime VR. And there are other developments in the works of which we are all aware, software implementations of great power that are platform-independent. SGI is doing a good thing hiring Linda, whom all of us in the field love and admire, but the cult of SGI as the wellspring of all energy and invention in the field really doesn't serve our community or, for that matter, SGI. In the past, SGI's technology has been high-priced, exclusive, often unavailable to developers without the right connections within SGI, and in many ways, an impediment to sales in our field. I don't think I'm saying anything that isn't already widely known. It's the Emperor's Clothes all over again. Our first prospective client to explicity ask for SGI-based solutions is one of the nation's largest banks, willing to spend luxuriantly. For most everyone else with whom we've dealt, still trying to puzzle out how the technology can work for them, invoking the SGI mantra is often a deal-breaker. It shouldn't be this way, but it is. This is not to say that the people in SGI aren't visionary or don't recognize the promise inherent in virtual worlds, but it is time to match promises with deeds. Or watch the business go elsewhere. Bob Jacobson