June 4, 1989

AT WHAT COST? The technology licensing deal between Sun Microsystems Inc. and Toshiba Corp., announced Tuesday, should destroy any romantic notions you may still have about U.S. firms really caring about restoring the United States as an economic power.

I shouldn’t just pick on Sun and its co-founder, who I renamed Scott McGreedy during my fit of pique on Tuesday. In fairness, I’d have to rename Scott McNealy and just about every other executive in the business, including all the big RISC players such as MIPS Computer Systems Inc. and Motorola Inc., who also have “strategic alliances” with the Japanese. On the fingers of a clenched fist you can count the vendors who scream about the Japanese memory chip situation (everyone) and those who have contributed to forming a U.S. DRAM (dynamic random access memory chips) consortium to ease our reliance on Japan (no one).

So now Sun has licensed its Sparc chip to Toshiba, the world’s No. 1 laptop maker and illegal purveyor of sensitive technology. Toshiba is very likely to build a Sparc-based laptop computer and a Sparc workstation, to blow everyone — theoretically, even Sun — out of the market. People who don’t think like me call this a brilliant move, a “coup.”

Toshiba may manufacture Sparc chips itself. But maybe it will at least buy Sparc chips from a U.S. company such as Cypress Semiconductor Corp. in San Jose, whose executives have very strong feelings about keeping their technology inside U.S. borders.

Sheridan Tatsuno, the Japan specialist at Dataquest Inc., says Toshiba is likely to use a U.S.-built Sparc chip because Japanese firms are under pressure to buy American. “If these firms can jointly develop chips or get an American to pick up the development costs, then they can just buy the RISC chips, sign into the consortium, and compete in the computer market instead of the chip market,” Tatsuno says.
Just what we’ve been waiting for.

OUT OF ADVERSITY: I met Bob Markinson a few weeks ago, after I was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome, an occupational wrist disorder. Markison, who for a few more weeks is chief of San Francisco General Hospital’s Hand Surgery Service (he’s entering private practice July 5), is also a multimedia hacker who is beta-testing a software/hardware combo for Greenleaf Medical Systems in Palo Alto.

The Greenleaf system is called HIES, for Hand-Impairment Evaluation System. Running on a color Macintosh II, HIES enhances every phase of a clinical exam, testing and mapping a comprehensive number of hand functions. It is connected to a series of electronic sensors that quickly measure various ranges of motion, grip and pinch strength and nerve sensitivity, and provides automatic reporting in standard required formats.

“(HIES) is a fair, simple, pleasant system for evaluating disability in the hand,” says Markison, who works with artists, musicians and others who suffer from overuse problems. “I feel privileged to be working with (Greenleaf’s) team on some of the software design. It will find frequent, daily use in my new practice.”

HIES will ship in about two months and will cost about $40,000. “Many hand clinics will see 60 patients in one day, and today no one has time to do complete evaluations,” says Greenleaf founder Walter Greenleaf, a neurobiologist whose team includes recent grads of Stanford University’s medical computer science and artificial intelligence programs. “We think HIES will probably pay for itself in a day or two in some of the busier clinics.”

Greenleaf also thinks HIES will help stabilize impairment assessments for disability claims, which vary by insurance carrier and by state. “We’re hoping insurance companies will enjoy seeing assessments standardized,” he says and, as a result, require doctors to use the HIES system.

Greenleaf knows that old-school, doctor-as-god types won’t like the system. But that was one reason he created the product, to “give people the information they need to make their own decisions.”

KILL THE POOR: Advertising agencies are getting desperate for new blood. The May 17-23 issue of “In These Times” reports that the Saatchi Center for Wellbeing and Human Development (Oxymoron Alert), a spinoff of the mondo ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi, is funding high-tech research to “transport” students to a variety of computer-generated hypermall environments during school hours.

They can remain in their chairs, while their minds roam around the virtual mall, electronically buying products that could be shipped home later. One researcher claimed that “leaving as little as .078 percent of an affluent teen-ager’s brain-power in the classroom is enough to maintain a B-minus average.”

No figures were given for non-affluent students; they probably don’t matter.