May 14, 1989

VIRTUALLY REAL: A couple of guys who had been tinkering with notions like 3-D television, virtual reality (modeling the real world via computer) and interactive video before they reached buzzword status have converged in an office in North Beach to publish a free-flowing accounting of their collective wit, wisdom and excellent sources. They call themselves the Green Street Gang, in honor of the fact that the very offices they occupy were the birthplace of electronic television, invented by Philo T. Farnsworth and his band of wireheads — also called the Green Street Gang — in 1927.

Marty Perlmutter and Tom Hargadon are Harvard alums who share the titles of editor/publisher of the gang’s newsletter, The Green Sheet. Both have been industry activists for a couple of decades as writers, consultants and developers. They met at Harvard some 20 years ago, and vowed they’d work together some day.

“This newsletter is the summation of 20 years of knowledge,” Perlmutter says. “Tom is a monster in telecom, and I bring what I know about interactive technology. Because of the new fusion between video and computers, we now have a coherent way of talking to each other.”

They also have great connections. Perlmutter says that four weeks ago Hargadon told him all the information on HDTV (high-definition TV) that was contained in a New York Times article published only a week or so ago.

Perlmutter also said that industry scuttlebutt has it that Sony Corp., which everyone thinks is a shoo-in for government HDTV funding, won’t get any money. “Their proposal stinks, technically,” he says. Remember, you heard it here first.

CHANGING TIMES: Last week I had only sketchy information about Lee Felsenstein, the legendary Silicon Valley engineer who just returned from an exploratory business mission to the Soviet Union. Felsenstein, president of Golemics Inc., a Berkeley computer company, is helping the Soviets get a toenail in the water of the PC industry.

With the USA-Canada Institute of the Academy of Sciences, Golemics leased a connection to Moscow from the San Francisco-Moscow Teleport to link identical Unix computers. The machines will promote software and marketing development.

“They don’t have any marketing there at all,” Felsenstein says. “We’re talking about developing the channels between the companies here who want to do something with the Soviets, and the people who are likely to become the companies (in the USSR). They can sell their brains through this channel temporarily to the U.S., to get some hard currency, which is what they lust for.” (The ruble can only be used inside the USSR.)

Felsenstein was also offered a building while in Moscow that, if things work out, will become a one-stop shop — training center, maintenance depot, and sales office — for the nascent Soviet personal computer industry.

All this is exciting to those who’ve long believed that the USSR is not the enemy, but Felsenstein says it’s disconcerting for Pentagon hardliners, who he spoke with to get proper licensing for the Unix deal. “They told me that a year ago they would have turned me down flat,” says Felsenstein. “They said, “You’re riding the wave of change.”

Not everyone thinks Felsenstein’s mission is possible. Gary Chapman, executive director of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, also just returned from a USSR trek and thinks the prognosis for the Soviet economy is grim. “I have never seen a peacetime economy in such bad shape,” he wrote me recently. “Most people I spoke with believe, as I do now as well, that the gap between the U.S. and the Soviet Union with respect to computer technology will actually increase in the near future .Ž.Ž. even if we relax our export controls. .Ž.Ž. This is one of those occasions, of course, in which I’d love to be proved wrong.”

GEORGE WUZ HEAR: A few ago President Bush was ensconced in the very same, very tony suite at the very San Jose Fairmont Hotel where Farallon Computing of Berkeley held its Apple Developer Conference party Wednesday night. Its most obvious and demonstrated feature was a telescoping TV set disguised as a table at the foot of the bed, which became the butt of many George and Barbara jokes.

More interesting was the buzz about the Secret Service’s advance work. Supposedly it tore out all the wiring, electrical and phone, on three entire floors so it would know for sure that the area hadn’t been bugged. Plenty of Silicon Valley companies have pretty good detection equipment, but I guess the feds wanted to put a few good people to work. The rumored price to taxpayers: $300,000.