From: bluefire@well.com (Bob Jacobson)
Subject: Re: INDUSTRY: Virtual Reality is Dead! Long Live Virtual Reality!
Date: 14 May 1997 10:52:49 GMT
Message-ID: <5lc5i1$c1d$1@was.hooked.net>
Organization: The Well, San Francisco, CA



By different names VR (never my favorite) is becoming embedded in
industrial processes of all types.  That's why we decided to hold
a VR Pioneers Day at SRI and SGI in August:  out with the old, in
with the new.

Every industry has experienced its "golden age" of small, vibrant
entrepreneurs taking it to the masses -- and then they die.  And
in their wake spring up new businesses and organizations able to
go an additional step. It's an evolution.

Unfortunately, some of us (me included) have to pay the price for
the freedom of being a little unreal about what it means to be in
business.  We had the enjoyment of helping to shape the vision.

They say that successful revolutionaries make terrible presidents.
The mindsets are inherently alien.  But someone has to overthrow
the oppressive dominant paradigm, and then someone else has to
heal the rift so that the energies of both "sides" can be focused
on the main task, advancing the state of the art while garnering
the resources to go further.

I noted to a friend over lunch that of the 20-odd people who 
worked for Worldesign Inc. (my erstwhile company) over four years,
every single one ended up in a great job, many doing "VR" in one
form or another.  When we were together, in a "VR" company, we
had 20 good ideas.  Now they all can bloom.  That's life.

Bob Jacobson
SRI Consulting
Menlo Park, California


bluefire@well.com (Bob Jacobson)