From: cyberoid@u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson)
Subject: Re: ANNOUNCE: SGI Evangelist, etc., etc.
Date: 15 Feb 1996 17:55:48 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle


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

Just a point of order.

In an earlier post, I called to question SGI's press release's
focus on the negatives regarding virtual worlds.  John Wann
replied (first quoting me),

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>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.
> .......We're in the marketplace and must start delivering, not tinkering
>in > the lab to achieve the 99th percentile of perfection.
 
This is pretty rich given that Bob seems to have strenously denied
(both through this medium and public meetings) that there have ever
been any problems. When was this "contriteness", or does he mean the
rest of us "running around in labs" trying to sort out the legacy left
by the massive explosion of virtual promise ("promise you virtually
anything") in the early 1990s.

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I doubt that John Wann has read very much if anything that I have
written.  Had he, he would have seen that I have been one of the
harshest critics of hype in our field -- but not at the cost of
promise and hope, two essential conditions of human endeavor.  People
in our field have eaten a lot of crow, much of it ingested at our own
hands; we don't need corpora- tions to tell us that we're sucky.

Skepticism at SGI has a long and healthy history and, because of the
company's central role (at least until now) as the sole source of
usable technology, has seriously affected progress in our field.  As a
relatively recent addition to our community of interest, John may not
be intimate with the origins of "virtual reality" and what has or has
not been the case regarding various actors' roles in it.

As they say, the proof is in the pudding and after eating all our
spinach, it's time for some dessert.

See you at the 3D interface conference, John?

Bob Jacobson