VRML ... That's The Ticket! by John Barrows

"We'd like to get to know you just a little for our files", quoth Simon and/or Garfunkel. I read the NY Times religiously (you'll see, as this article unfolds), and I always take pains to make sure I know who is writing the article before I actually read it. This of course makes sense, if you don't want to be hood-winked by the author or lead down some garden path only to find out the guy's a Nazi from some conservative think-tank. So, who the hell am I? I'm not a techno-geek. Couldn't be one if a tried. Jealous? Envious? Sure! Those guys have all the girls and all the money in this part of the millennium.

I started my own company to create fun stuff for the Web, and to make my own entertaining sites. I did this because as we all know the Net is it, and since I gave up watching TV years ago because it had already (even then) used up its useful purpose and was starting to eat itself, I wanted to be the entertainment pioneer of the new medium on the block. I'm an ex-marketer from Polo/Reebok/MCA. Entertainment creation for the Web is a shit job, but somebody's gotta do it. And therein resides the nut of my tirade. So I'm looking at the industry a little from the inside and a little from the outside, being an expert at neither. I have no details to back up my accusations, no facts to support my hypotheses. All I've got is my intuition and insight, and they've done very well for me so far, BTW.

Now that we're old buddies and you know me intimately, I'll tell you what's on my mind. I started out the door the other evening on my way to "An evening with Vint Cerf", a chummy little affair hosted by Last Saturdays. Hell, I had a comp ticket, and I had a chance to be awe struck by Vint, cop a gander at Kim Polese, and be moderated by Leo LaPorte. The topic, believe it or not was "Entertainment and New Media Technologies". Man, this I just had to see. (As it turns out, I answered the phone as I was on my way out of my office and wound up talking to my step-son for an hour about some personal issues he was struggling with, so I missed the show).

Anyway, think about it. I mean, I didn't actually wind up going so I don't know what was actually said. But here you had a program on "entertainment" on the Net with a guy who "developed TCP/IP" (sounds like a rave drug to me), a woman who invented a language that talks to computers (kinda like Hal, in reverse), and an avatar from Microsoft (the Disney of the great Pacific Northwest). So that's the gist of my plaintive wail. What do any of these people know about entertainment?

Who was the guy who invented the TV? Milton Berle? Naw. Jackie Gleason? Naw. Ed Sullivan? Naw. God! I give up. I know it was one of those big important entertainment names. I just forget at the moment. Can somebody help me. Anyone, anyone? (Notice I'm not using the tech industry's word for entertainment, "content". To me "content" is a Java-induced ball bouncing around my screen, or a wired monkey swinging from banner to banner). Help me, please. I'm out of touch with Web Weality I fear. I feel a dizzy spell coming on.

Today I read that (in the NY Times, of course) most Web advertising is done by high-tech companies, directed at other high-tech companies, on each other's web sites. Why is that? Well, it's because the truly savvy marketers (Nike, Reebok, P. & G, Coke, Pepsi, General Foods, et al) know that "there's no there, there" (I think Gertrude Stein said that. Maybe she was talking about Philadelphia. So maybe the Web is the Philadelphia of Cyberspace). Let's take a few million people in the entire world who spend some time on the Internet (out of the billions or trillions of people in total...I lose track), and assume a whole lot of them are on AOL and therefore in a permanent fog anyway. Let's assume that the rest spend a lot of time e-mailing, chatting, MUDing, downloading, looking for smut, and buying a book from Amazon. So, when are they surfing the Web? What is there for them to find that's worth finding? There are practically more Web sites than Web-surfers. No kidding!

Even if you've never seen the Web, you could guess what the average quality of the entertainment experience is. (Hi! I'm Bob, a sophomore here at UC Berkeley, and this is my girlfriend's pet cat drinking a beer, and here's a story I wrote that no one would publish...isn't the Internet great?...and here are my favorite links in the whole world...bye!). That is not what I, or Colgate-Palmolive, call a "market". To compete with TV, these Web sites we all hope to create, better have something worth watching. I call it "webcentricity" and it must be fun!

Frank Rich. January 15, 1997. NY Times (sorry). "Unpredictable creative genius, not marketing or technology, will drive Net culture, just as it was Milton Berle, not bigger and better picture tubes, that made Americans run out and buy TV's". Now we're getting to my point. This is no chicken and egg conundrum. There's no market because most people, by a long shot, can't afford a computer, and Microtel (is that the right derogatory term?) keeps making faster more expensive computers and convincing people we all need to have one. There's no market because the people who make real entertainment don't understand this technology. Who the hell does?

The people who make the technology are too busy paying big money to some generic conference organizing company so they can sit around in a big circle-jerk holding their cards so close to their chests it's causing heart failure, and telling each other how important they all are, and giving away poorly designed T-shirts to geeks who roam the aisles trying to look cool and who smoke in the lobbies. What, my friends, has any of this got to do with taking a revolutionary communications paradigm and creating a market for, of, and by the people? Vint Cerf, if he were dead, would be turning in his grave.

"Girls just wanna have fu-un...", (Cyndy Lauper). Hey, maybe that's why there's not many girls on the Net. No fun. Actually, we boys wanna have fun, too, Cyndy. Here's the VRML part. I think VRML and the concept of interactivity are huge factors in determining what will make this new paradigm a revolutionary communications tool. And I believe that entertainment is what will make the Internet "sing" and the $$$$$ flow. Trust me. I'm the visionary here. I've got a track record.

Each of you do what I say. Find a person who works for Black Sun or OnLive! or Protozoa or OZ or Worlds or Dimension X or..... (I'm afraid the list goes on forever but I'm holding at 1500 words) and drag them kicking and screaming to a big picture window on some top floor of some tall building in Silicon Valley, and point them South, for starters. Explain to them that they need to tell Hollywood about the best kept secret in software (3D...shhhhh), and ask them to extend their pocket protectors in friendship and goodwill so that something wonderful might be conceived in the union. Then point them East, where the rest of America awaits eagerly, hopefully for something tangible that they can sink their fun-starved teeth into. Point them Northwest and have them use their considerable cognitive skills to convince the Lord of the Underworld that it's the ubiquitous potential of the computer, not its elitism, which will carry the day into the 21st millennium.

As a half-baked industry insider/outsider, my perusal of the other popular media (magazines, radio, newspapers) tells me that there is no voice and no attempt to promote VRML (or whatever the geeks decide will be the "standard") to the people who matter....the entertainment creators and the populous at large. This is the most inward looking cabal of tech-heads in the entire software industry. You've got to promote yourselves, sweethearts. Create a buzz. Market some bullshit. To my knowledge, there's tens of millions of dollars of VC money being poured into these companies, and nobody's doing any promotion. There at least oughta be an industry association saying "VRML, the other white media". Or "Got VRML". Or maybe even "Where's the VRML". We could get that little old lady. Wait! I've got it! "It's the VRML, stupid". We could get Bill Clinton, now that he's got nothing to do.

Look at Compaq who is taking its industry leading market share and risking it on an affordable (not state of the art) computer. Take a page out of Rob Glaser's book, who has just one visionary goal "...to turn the Internet into the next great mass medium". Tell these VeRMin to hang their heads in shame for being so short-sighted and introspective and insular. These folks might think they are trying to sell themselves, but the fact is, I never hear or see a thing about VRML, and I'm just a dumb consumer. And to tell you the truth, when I talk to the Hollywood types, they have no clue what VRML is or how they'd use it. Somebody oughta round up a posse and get the word out. Let's create a "Help" menu for the VRML-challenged. Send all suggestions and applications to John Gluck at VRMLSite.

Yes, in this morning's NY Times the musical question "Could Pixar Make It Without Disney?" was posed by Steve Lohr. The answer my friend isn't blowin' in the wind, the answer isn't blowin' in the wind".