August 21, 1988

NAVIGATE THIS: I can’t wait until Nov. 19 for the annual meeting of the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, based in Palo Alto. As usual, director Gary Chapman has lined up some mondo speakers — Sidney Drell of the Stanford Center for International Security and Arms Control, Robert Howard, author of “Brave New Workplace,” and a panel discussing the FBI’s new and scary upgrade to its criminal database, the NCIC 2000.

But I’m most looking forward to the panel on Apple Computer’s “Knowledge Navigator” video. Chapman says the panel will discuss the social implications of the Knowledge Navigator, John Sculley’s vision of a flat little desktop computer that will supposedly answer our picture phones, take and deliver messages to and from friends, lovers and moms, dial up databases, retrieve and present data in graphic formats, and do just about everything for us except perform bodily functions.

Panel members will discuss what kind of world will allow this kind of computer to exist. The panelists: Fernando Flores, co-author of the brilliant “Understanding Computers and Cognition;” Peter Lyman, director of Educational Computing at USC; Larry Tesler, VP for research and advanced technology at Apple; Theodore Roszak, author of “The Cult of Information” and professor of sociology at Cal State Hayward, and PC industry commentator Esther Dyson.

The meeting, at Stanford, is open to non-members, too. Cost is $10 for the weekend.

AND IT’S HIS REAL NAME: Barry Brilliant of Brilliant Color in Mountain View is an entrepreneur with guts. A 15-year veteran trade show laborer who installed and dismantled many a booth around here, he actually sold his house in San Francisco’s Ingleside district and spent the proceeds on computer equipment so he can make color business cards.

Brilliant quotes Buckminster Fuller: “Look out into the universe for something that needs to be done and do it.” Brilliant says, “It’s clear to me the universe needs color cards, so that’s what I’m doing.” A mellow guy who typically wears Chi Pants and a driving cap, Brilliant says he got into the business after making up some color business cards for another enterprise. People wanted the cards more than they wanted his services. “So what am I, a dummy?”

Brilliant has a whole portfolio of designs, but custom cards can be made from any PICT file (a Macintosh file format). By January’s Mac Expo in San Francisco, he hopes to have the first system to image-capture on the spot and “offer people 100 color cards with their picture and name in 10 minutes.”

TALKING BACK: Remember that old Woody Allen schtick when his appliances all conspire against him? I have to admit that’s what crossed my mind when I heard about Intel’s new Wildcard-88. It’s already installed in more than 14 million PC XTs on Earth alone, but Intel has repackaged its ubiquitous 8088 CPU chip onto a tiny new board.

The new Wildcard-88 is only 2-by-4 inches, but it’s the equivalent of a complete PC XT motherboard. That means a PC XT can essentially be built into into just about any piece of equipment your bizarre little mind can imagine.

Intel marketing manager Dirk Smits won’t say who, but says large customers have already placed large orders with this “embedded DOS” in mind. One of the first applications, he says, will be in home control and security devices, phones and interactive video kiosks for retail stores.
I can’t wait to see what kind of laptop comes out of a device like this, but Smits says that won’t be Intel’s primary focus.

“There’s a huge market in custom controllers that Wildcard won’t replace in the short run,” he says. “No one will use it in place of the $3 chip that goes in your microwave oven. But if you want your microwave to talk to you, you’ll probably use Wildcard.”

HIGH-TECH HUMOR: The rivalry between IBM and Apple — and Intel and Motorola — sometimes pops up in strange places. One of the best things about “The Making of the Macintosh,” a stroll down memory lane at SwelterWorld Expo in Boston a couple weeks ago, was a surprise appearance by Tom Gunter, product manager for Motorola’s 68000 and 88000 chip families, who made a rare public appearance and told some hilarious stories about dealing with Steve Jobs while the machine was being developed.

When the alarm on Gunter’s electronic watch detonated and he unsuccessfully tried to stop it, terminal wiseacre Guy Kawasaki, now president of Acius and former head evangelist for Apple, said “It’s an (Intel 80)386 watch.” Gunter shot back, “And it needs a coprocessor to make it beep.”