April 2, 1989

I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE: Multimedia is already a buzzword in the computer industry, even though hardly anyone knows what it really means. But if you’re going to scoff, do it fast, because you won’t for long. Computing is heading toward multimedia at Mach speed.

“Multimedia” used to mean a lesson that came with a printed handout and a slide carousel. Today’s tools allow multidimensional lessons and presentations that use videodisc, CDROM, computers, TV screens and software in various combinations. The idea is to link all these tools in such a way that the user will never have to tinker with the disparate elements.

Last week, Apple Computer invited journalists to Cupertino to spend a day learning about the tools it’s developing in its San Francisco Multimedia Lab. You should see what people are doing with this stuff! Although it has plenty of other applications, it’s really going to transform education.

“The kind of work we’re doing is what kids will take for granted some day,” said Kristina Hooper, director of the lab. She showed us Apple’s “Visual Almanac,” a video disk that contains some 7,000 images and film clips on a variety of subjects, including the animal kingdom, U.S. history, and space.

Hooper will be giving away the disk to multimedia developers as soon as the software is finalized. “It’s just for our collaborators and others who make stacks,” she said. “I want to give it to them and let them make more like them.”

Arranging pictures and clips from this disk into a presentation worthy of an A-plus is incredibly easy. It took me about 15 minutes to cook one up, prompting an impressed Apple employee to tell me, “Gee, you did that just as good as a third-grader.”

An impressive project is foreign language coursework being developed at Stanford University. Everyone knows the best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in the country’s culture, so Stanford took a French-language soap opera about a young man named Philippe, put it on videodisc and hooked it to a Mac.

Watching the drama, you discover that Philippe is a freeloader. His girlfriend breaks up with him after a loud fight at a Paris cafe, and so Philippe needs to find an apartment. He turns to the camera and asks you to help him, which you do — by becoming part of the action, listening to phone messages and reading newspaper ads, among other things. At any time you can stop the video disk and ask pertinent questions of the program’s software.

Scores of other university projects are happening, though I can’t discuss them all. But what’s obvious is multimedia’s where it’s at. Steve Jobs saw this coming way back when (as per usual). His Next Computer System ships with a digital signal processor, custom chips for fast input and output, and high-quality sound. Next is even putting videodisc control software right on its “floptical” disk.

You also probably read last week that IBM and Intel are working together to put Digital Video Interactive (DVI) — full-motion video, just like on your VCR — into boards, chips and software for IBM’s PS/2 computers. And IBM hinted that it’s even working on a multimedia home computer using DVI. More will be revealed as this new genre takes off.

SPEAKING OF PHILIPPE: Not only did industry gadfly Esther Dyson schedule her PC Forum in Palm Springs during UCLA’s spring break (oops), but things got a little hectic in other ways, too. On the last day, a mystery guest put many copies of a recent negative New England Monthly story about Lotus Development chief Jim Manzi under the doors of all Dyson’s conference attendees. Manzi wasn’t at the conference.

Headlined “Bad Dream” with a cover picture of a very depressed looking Manzi, the story was, as one person said, “a total trash-Manzi article.” Dyson went to the podium and said (sic), “We’re appalled by this and would like to find out who did it.” By Monday, the industry was abuzz.

The Boston Globe got on it and tracked down someone at the Monthly, who said the deed was done by none other than Philippe Kahn of Borland International, which makes a competing spreadsheet called Quattro. Andrea Cunningham, whose PR firm represents Borland, was so outraged that she threatened to resign the account if Kahn didn’t apologize to Dyson and Manzi. Which Cunningham said he did.

“I was disgusted and embarrassed by it,” said Cunningham, who just was profiled in Bulldog Reporter, a PR and media newsletter, about how she helped change his image. “I don’t think he realized how serious it was. I told him I thought he lost a year or two of credibility building.”
Kahn was in Tokyo last week and could not be reached for comment.

EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES: An attendee at the recent NetPower89 conference, sponsored by AT&T, says he was floored by AT&T’s extravagance. Some 1,700 people attended, and rumor was that AT&T spent $17 million to $22 million to woo developers and customers into adopting ISDN (integrated services digital network) technology. If true, that’s $10,000 to $13,000 per attendee. Reach out and drench someone.