No doubt the failure last decade of Harmonic Convergence left a bad taste for convergences in general. But one need only look to the small-computer industry to see that synchronism is alive and well.
The brief history of the small-computer industry is a series of three converging lines: hardware, software and user need. When all three converge on a single point, the resulting explosion gets written up in Time magazine, and a few people get rich quickly.
The first such convergence was the Apple computer, the VisiCalc spreadsheet program and a large body of users who were sick and tired of erasing and refiguring ledger books. That convergence effectively catapulted the small-computer business out of the novelty category and into offices.
The most recent convergence has been loosely lumped under the category of ”desktop publishing,” the ability to create sophisticated typeset documents incorporating graphics and photography on a desktop computer. Desktop publishing came about by the convergence of several lines:
– The availability of low-cost laser printers from Japan.
– The institutionalization of more powerful desktop computers with more memory and more storage space.
– The acceptance of graphical interfaces, such as that of Apple`s Macintosh or Microsoft`s Windows.
– The introduction of Adobe Systems` PostScript page description language and Apple`s LaserWriter to use it.
– The introduction of Aldus` PageMaker as a Macintosh program and other page-design programs such as Quark`s Xpress.
– The soaring cost of producing a page of type by conventional means, which produced a body of disgruntled users.
Those same lines, plus a few extra, are converging again to create the desktop multimedia presentation market. Granted, ”desktop multimedia presentation” doesn`t sound as sexy as desktop publishing, but given that Publish Magazine estimates there are 20 million to 25 million business meetings every day, hardware and software makers are headed whole-hog into multimedia.
As with almost any small computer category, the term ”desktop presentation” covers vast ground.
At one end, the most basic, is using the tools of desktop publishing to create slides or overhead transparencies for a presentation. At the other end are full-blown animated productions, incorporating video, still images, text, graphics and sound.
”I think the long-term implications for multimedia computers are profound,” said Nick Arnett, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based consultant and publisher of the newsletter Multimedia Computing & Presentations. ”The real impact is the merger of computer and video technology. Everybody`s lives are affected by television programming and computer programming, yet we don`t really have any control over it.
”The long-term implication of multimedia technology is that the technology becomes more democratized; people have more control over it.”
From its beginnings, the idea of computer presentations was to set your presentation apart from the crowd-a neat trick, considering the media sophistication of today`s audiences.
Desktop slides were a logical step from desktop publishing. After all, if desktop publishers were already incorporating text and graphics on a screen, proofing on a laser printer and sending the file to a service bureau to be reproduced as typeset copy, it didn`t take much imagination for the service bureaus to start offering slide output as an option.
The big players in the desktop publishing arena were quick to fill the need. Seattle-based Aldus Corp., creators of the landmark PageMaker, created Aldus Persuasion, a sophisticated program for the Macintosh that created slides with text, graphics, charts, graphs and colors. Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp., of Microsoft Word fame, anted up Microsoft PowerPoint for the Mac. And in the PC-DOS arena, the leading slide program, Lotus Freehand, is from Cambridge, Mass.-based Lotus Development Corp., author of the best-selling software program of all-time, Lotus 1-2-3.
The next step up from slides is the multimedia presentation. Here things get slippery. A full-blown presentation can include sight-and-sound, animated, interactive video and require the services of a fleet of experts to carry it off.
”On the other hand,” Arnett said, ”sometimes people think animation is a lot more complicated than it really is.”
His example is a software product that shows graphically what happens on a spreadsheet when one number is changed.
”Really, you`re doing exactly the same thing as if a person stopped by your desk and asked for an explanation of these numbers,” he said. ”You`d point out why changing a number here affected all the other numbers there. With this animation program, a computer is just recording that. You can add a voice narration, then use it for a presentation or to send to someone else in the company who needs to understand the numbers.”
The addition of audio, Arnett said, is a tremendous advantage, because it brings the computer closer to the way people really interact and work, which is ”a mixture of sound and vision.”
Steven Jobs` NeXT computer features a voice component that also can be used with electronic mail. Verbal ”notes” can be tagged on documents, and people can respond by recording other notes.
Right now, multimedia presentations usually are seen in the advertising presentation arena, created for special clients. While multimedia
presentations are flashy, they`re also expensive, either to have produced or to purchase enough equipment to produce yourself. Arnett puts the number at around $50,000 for a high-end Mac or PC presentation workstation.
But today`s accomplishments in multimedia presentations, however impressive, quail in the face of the technology waiting just around the corner. The process is called ”virtual reality,” creating a complete environment in a computer.
Simply put (if anything also dubbed ”artificial reality” can be simply put) virtual reality may be the ultimate video game, the ultimate multimedia presentation. You don a special wired helmet that fits a pair of tiny TV sets in front of your eyes, slip on a pair of sensor-studded gloves connected to a machine and step into the world of the computer.
Any world. Because of the glove sensors and the helmet, you see a three-dimensional world that exists only in the computer. And you can interact with this world, or with anyone else wearing the equipment.
”The real money application for virtual reality is simulation and training,” said futurist Gary Knight of Microelectronics and Computer Corp. in Austin, Tex., a research and development ”think tank” funded by 19 of America`s electronic giants.
”Business spent $50 billion last year on training. With virtual reality, you can take a guy-I don`t care of he`s a surgeon or a checkout clerk at the supermarket-put a hat on him and let him screw up, which is how we learn.”
Virtual reality is already a virtual reality, Knight said. One company, VPL Research in Redwood, Calif., one of the pioneers in the field, expects a version to be available for amusement parks and museums as soon as next year. (Initially, with the little versions, this is where the money is, as they will function more or less like a supersophisticated video game.)
”It`s a question of modeling,” Knight said. ”We need to be able to model and program any environment a business wants or needs. Say you`re getting ready to send one of your top managers to Tokyo for a year. No problem. We just pop her in a box and put a hat on her and give her a couple of weeks in Tokyo for a warmup. We need to be able to model that.”
Even more enthusiastic is Walter Jon Williams, a science fiction writer and futurist. His cult classic book ”Hardwired” depicts a future with people able to ”hardwire” themselves to increasingly computer-controlled machinery; it has ended up in everything from a board game to ads for the Infiniti, Nissan`s new luxury car. Williams was one of the science fiction writers invited to Microelectronics and Computer Corp. to meet with researchers and discuss the human-computer interface.
”The next step,” Williams said, ”is miniaturizing the equipment so you can put it directly into your brain. . . . The expression `video head` will soon have an altogether different meaning.”
After that thought, full-color computerized animation seems so, well, tame.
