April 30, 1989

CITY AS LAB: Last week, the FCC approved GTE Corp.’s request to build and operate a fiber optic “Network of the Future” in Cerritos. The L.A. County community is one of the few U.S. cities to get fiber in what’s called “the last mile,” from the switching center to the home. GTE has turned this community into a living lab, and select residents try a bunch of services, such as video on demand (order up a video over the phone — forget the video stores); switched video (receiving and transmitting video to and from other homes); and integrated telephone and television service.

GTE is also connecting 16,000 homes and 2,000 businesses to the coaxial cable of the local cable company, to provide other experimental services. One is called Main Street, an interactive shopping service that responds to commands from a TV’s remote control. Then there’s “enhanced pay-per-view television,” a service that offers as many as 30 channels at one time. You’ll never need to leave the house again.

WILD PARTNERS: The eclectic David Bunnell’s new company, Io Publishing in San Mateo, seems to have joined forces with a like-minded soul.

Cynthia Robbins-Roth, author since 1986 of a popular newsletter, BioVenture View, is merging her San Mateo-based newsletter with Bunnell’s upcoming biotech news service.

Robbins-Roth, a Ph.D. in biochemistry, went to Genentech fresh out of school in 1981, but surprised herself by leaving the labs in May 1984 to join California Biotechnology’s business development group. Her newsletter began there as the Robbins-Roth Report, an update for Cal Bio management. By the time she left, though, everyone in the company was clamoring for it.

“It was kind of addictive,” she said. “Did you ever see that old movie called “The Corpse Grinders?’ Well, when they got caught, hundreds of cats were sitting outside the cat food factory waiting because they’d become addicted to human flesh. It was kind of like that.”

If the above anecdote does not prove her bizarre enough, please note that Robbins-Roth also has a taste for high-heeled suede shoes, and often requires a new pair be written into her consulting contracts. But lest you think she’s not a serious scientist, her newsletter, which runs more than 20 pages a month, is comprehensive. And the consulting arm of her firm has two partners, Carol Hall and Harriet Strimpel, Ph.D.’s in molecular biology (Stanford) and cell biology (Oxford), respectively. The trio just finished a “monster, multiclient study for the Japanese.” (Uh-oh.)

Bunnell says they’re planning to go on-line in October, when Io and BioVenture will do live coverage of a slew of important biotech events taking place that month. The service will follow industry news, and add analysis, special reports and on-line conferences over a computer network.

BARTER FOR BOOMERS: A new information service called the Home Office Business Network (HOBN) started up about a week ago to support the U.S.’s 30 million home workers with computers and modems. What’s cool about HOBN, other than its e-mail and live chat, is its National Home Office Business Directory lets home businesses register on line, and post information about cash discounts and whether they will barter for services.

HOBN, from Dial Direct Response Marketing in San Francisco, is available via a network run by Minitel Services Co. in White Plains, N.Y., a cousin to the famous French Minitel. There’s no fee other than the $10.20 per hour to use the network. Dial Direct sends you software for free.

MACHINE PHILOSOPHY: Don’t let the title of UC-Berkeley philosophy Professor Hubert Dreyfus’ lecture scare you off. Dreyfus promises that “The Limits of Calculative Rationality,” a free lecture sponsored by the Berkeley chapter of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, will “absolutely” be simple enough for regular people to understand.

“I couldn’t possibly do otherwise,” says Dreyfus. “I’m a philosopher, not a computer scientist.” He’ll speak at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, in Room 60 of Evans Hall at Cal, and his topic will be the hype vs. logical reality of building artificial intelligence and expert systems for computers.

Dreyfus wrote a book in 1972 called “What Computers Can’t Do,” which is oft-quoted to criticize artificial intelligence.

Dreyfus went to MIT with Terry Winograd, who with Fernando Flores wrote the fascinating “Understanding Computers and Cognition,” published in 1986. Dreyfus says it’s similar to his book on AI, “only from a computer science point of view.”