May 28, 1989

WHAT NEXT? Small but mighty Mountain View-based VPL Research, inventors of the DataGlove, are doing it again. On June 7, VPL and Pacific Bell will introduce what company founder Jaron Lanier calls “the telephone of the future,” the RB2 — Reality Built for Two.

Designed for the “super phone lines” of the future, RB2 is comprised of a new product, the EyePhone, along with the rest of VPL’s haute-tech computerized clothing that allows users to interact in a computer-generated world. EyePhones are computerized goggles that project images onto the eyes so the wearer is surrounded by simulated reality, in 3-D color.

Two people can do things together “like build buildings or perform simulated surgery,” Lanier says. The synthetic realities are custom-designed by VPL, using its software called Swivel 3D.

RB2 will be exhibited at the Visionary Network Exhibit at Texpo ‘89, a telecom trade show at Brooks Hall in San Francisco, June 7-9. (You can attend Texpo free if you call 800/992-2788 and pre-register, Conley says. Otherwise, it’s $20 at the door.)

“We’re showing applications for the Pacific Bell network of the future,” says Jeff Conley, who oversees PacBell’s advanced technology exhibits.

At Texpo, RB2 will be demonstrated by two architects working on a day-care center from remote locations. After designing the center in Swivel 3-D, they don data-clothes and wander around inside their design, moving things as they see fit.

Lanier says he wanted a relationship with the phone company. “If the movie people ran it, they’d have dumb canned realities like simulated Tahitis. And if the computer people ran it, we’d always have to have shrink-wrap agreements. But with the phone company involved, it can become an open medium for sharing of tools.”

One entire (big) computer is required to control each eye, which partly explains RB2’s price: about $130,000 for one person and as much as $240,000 for two.

“You can actually trade eyes with the other person,” Lanier says, “if you want — design the “world’ so you see out through each other’s eyes.” Lanier sees great uses for amusement parks and schools. “My dream is to put one in a bus, call it “Reality on Wheels’ and move it around from school to school.”

Lanier also wants to put one in the San Francisco Exploratorium. “It’s the ultimate Exploratorium thing,” he says. “You could even (design a reality to) include all the other exhibits — it could be ‘Exploratorium in a Box.’”

VAL-STRESS: Wouldn’t you know, the book I’ve been wanting to write has been done. Hitting the stores Thursday is “Behind the Silicon Curtain: the Seductions of Work in a Lonely Era,” by Dennis Hayes of San Francisco. Published by South End Press, it’s a powerful indictment of the sociopolitical phenomena that keep Silicon Valley feeding on and off itself.

“I came from Sheboygan, Wis., a boringly stable town,” says Hayes. “That was one of the reasons why I was so shocked with the sensibility of Silicon Valley, the caffeine-soaked bloodstream of people who work there. It just never felt right. It’s not that I’m slow, it’s just that compulsiveness.”

Hayes also outlines a possible reason why the electronics industry has refused to “settle down,” as well as the “seductions of work,” his term for the Paradox of Silicon Valley. “The thing that brings this almost exclusively emigre work force here is the very thing that fragments their lives,” he says. “They center their lives around it. Friends, lovers, everything takes a back seat — not only to work, but to these lifestyle enclaves of shopping, aerobics, drugs,” that people are driven to pursue to keep up the frantic pace.

Hayes is also working on an investigative piece on high-tech for Mother Jones magazine. “I’m afraid when the piece is published, a lot of executives will just get out their black lists and say, ‘Bring me this man’s scalp,’” he says.

THANKS A PANTLOAD: Only a couple months after San Rafael-based Pixar won an Oscar for its computer-generated film “Tin Toy,” the company has laid off a big chunk of its work force and reorganized. Though it won’t provide figures — “we’re a private company and don’t divulge” such things, says a rep — one pink slip recipient says it’s as high as 25 percent of the total work force.

Pixar is a top gun in 3-D computer imaging, especially with its Renderman photorealism software. But Pixar’s been having a tough time selling its Pixar Image Computer, a box that hooks up to Unix workstations. More customers wanted a development tool kit for Renderman than wanted the computer itself, so pink slips started flying.

Pixar says it’s not discontinuing hardware sales, but its hardware engineering manager was let go last Thursday, and other key engineers are already working for competitor Silicon Graphics.