Software Vault: The Sapphire Collection/Software Vault (Sapphire Collection) (Digital Impact).ISO/cdr16/wired1_1.zip/ELECTRIC.WOR

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Wired_1.1_
Electric Word
************

The Golden Splice
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Once phone customers have ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network),
they can send faxes, computer data, and even video over existing
telephone wires while they are making a voice call. But different
regional phone companies have been using slightly different versions of
the ISDN standard, just as different railroads once ran on different
gauges in various parts of the country. You couldn't always get there
>from here, either on the early railroads or on an ISDN network.

Until recently. Last November, a consortium of telephone-related
companies launched America's first all-digital telephone network by
splicing 20 regional networks into one interoperable national network.
This event was dubbed "The Golden Splice," a reference to the "Golden
Spike" which completed the transcontinental railroad at Promontory
Summit, Utah. Barbara Hackman-Franklin, the US Secretary of Commerce,
was given the honor of placing the network's first public call.
Officials expect that by 1994, 50 percent of phone customers will have
access to ISDN. Modem manufacturers are rumored to be on the verge of
releasing a $99 ISDN adapter capable of unleashing the full reach of
video/data/graphics to anyone with a phone and a computer.

- Kevin Kelly

****************************************************************

Why do they call it 3DO?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
OK kids, listen up. Nintendo is passe - who cares about a smurfy chump
in overalls? And Sega is for undergrown adults with nothing better to do
than guide hedgehogs through tunnels in a fruitless quest for gold
rings. Leave those cheesy 16-bit wanna-be systems in the trash heap next
to the Pong unit. 3DO has arrived.

Well, not really arrived ... but if industry buzz counts for anything,
this company already has it made. Backed by Matsushita,  MCA, Time
Warner, Kliener Perkins and about 400 salivating developers; the San
Mateo, Calif.-based 3D0 is in the final stages of creating what founder
Trip Hawkins likes to call an "interactive multiplayer." But just
between you and me, it'll be the coolest game box in town. It might also
be that magic appliance that brings multimedia to the masses.

Hawkins is the dreamer behind software gaming house Electronic Arts. He
has since "distanced" himself from his former company to build a gaming
standard that informed-folk say will blow everything else out of the
water. The product was announced in early January (too late for our
press date), but don't expect to see anything in the stores until 1993's
Christmas buying season.

3DO's system is not a box, but rather a set of chips and specifications
that will be licensed to developers. (Remember, Nintendo didn't make
millions just selling boxes, it made millions selling licensing fees to
developers.) And who will be first out with a licensed box? The smart
money is on Matsushita - the largest consumer electronics company in the
world and the folks who gave us the VHS standard.

Those who have seen mock-ups of 3DO games describe the experience as
nothing short of living inside a movie. "Imagine Flight Simulator in
full-blown photo-realistic color," they enthuse. "Or how about John
Madden Football with video from actual Superbowls?"

Even better, how about a game culled from Columbia or MCA's latest
release, or educational software from National Geographic's latest
documentary? Stephen Spielberg reportedly shot extra footage of his
upcoming film "Jurassic Park" just so he could make an interactive 3DO
video game.

And guess what? This box can connect to your computer. It can even
connect to your cable feed. (Imagine - you can subscribe to the
Interactive Gaming Channel - once there is such a beast.) And it'll cost
less than $700 - to start! That means by 1995 or so, it'll cost about
the same as a VCR. At that price, even the schools can afford one. No
wonder Matsushita, and MCA are so interested.

-John Battelle

****************************************************************

Frozen Movies
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
How would a computer browse a movie? The MIT Media Lab has an idea:
freeze it. MIT's "frozen movies" are continuous frames of a digital
video sequence stacked up like a library card catalog to form a 3-D
block. Time runs from the first frame to the back. The frozen block can
then be sliced in any direction to reveal a pattern that can be
identified by a computer. The video of pedestrians at (inset, far right)
is sliced "ankle high" to reveal the pattern of walking feet. The blue
diagonal streaking in the rear is a pedestrian who appears later in the
video.

As the boy in the yellow jersey (center) exits the camera's frame later
in the video, he generates his portrait on the side of the frozen movie.

By analyzing overall color in various blocks, the Media Lab's software
can distinguish between a character and a change of scene, or a "shot
boundary." That may someday make it possible for computers to assist in
cataloging and tracking the endless stream of news footage, cinema and
TV reruns now dominating our daily life.

- Kevin Kelly

****************************************************************

Nocturnal Powerbooks Prowl German Clubs
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You're in this hip Hamburg bar, but things aren't going your way. You're
alone, bored, and to make matters worse, you're out of cigarettes.
Suddenly an apparition parts the club's smoky din: It's a blond goddess,
and she's packing a Powerbook. She's even giving out free cigarettes
(Philip Morris - not your brand, but hey, who cares?). She sits down
next to you, cracks open that sexy black notebook (you've always wanted
one, admit it) and up pop a series of interactive games that test
memory, an architectural icon quiz on several well-known German
buildings, and a quiz on three new inventions - only one of which is
real. In addition,  four cheeky, self-appointed "Ministers of Trend"
(covering "Fashion," "Music and Nightlife," "The Future," and "Love")
dispense digitized advice from their Powerbook windows on the world. Now
you're not bored, you're not alone, and if you win a game, you get a
hat, T-shirts, or a pack of cigarettes. That blond might even light one
for you, if you're lucky. Truly the answer to your dreams.

It's all part of a new marketing strategy from Philip Morris of Germany.
Realizing that interactive media is yet another place to advertise,
Morris commissioned Peter Kabel of the Kabel Corporation to create
something that would entertain bar patrons while reminding them which
cigarettes to smoke (a Philip Morris logo is evident no matter what else
is on the screen). While we don't condone the marriage of nicotine and
portable computing, it's clear this is a portent of where marketing is
headed in the digital age.

- Will Kreth

****************************************************************

>From Computer Bibles to Real Stories
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Fathered by a man who "probably would have voted for Reagan," Arthur
Naiman was raised in the suburbs of 1950s Chicago hearing many a story
"about how the Russians were brainwashing people."

Some 40 years later, Naiman, who has become a well-known figure to the
nearly 1 million readers of The Macintosh Bible, now finds himself on
the other side of such political rhetoric. In what has become the
realization of a 25-year dream, Naiman is now publishing concisely
written and visually pleasing political tracts under the series title
Real Stories. The series showcases respected, left-leaning authors such
as Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky.

In the process of making his dream a reality, Naiman wrote 13 books,
most of them computer titles save one that was a humorous dictionary of
Jewish slang. The Macintosh Bible was the key source of both the cash
and experience he needed to finally evolve Odonian Press - the Berkeley,
Calif., company that publishes Real Stories.

Naiman's vision was to make Real Stories accessible: short, distilled,
interesting prose for readers who didn't want to wade through "300 pages
of little type, narrow margins, and no paragraphs."

Judging by public demand, Naiman has hit a nerve. Of Odonian's first
four titles - Who Killed JFK? by Carl Oglesby, The Decline and Fall of
the American Empire by Gore Vidal, What Uncle Sam Really Wants by Noam
Chomsky, and Burma: The Next Killing Fields? by Alan Clements (all of
them published in 1992) - both Vidal and Chomsky's editions have already
enjoyed a second printing. Naiman anticipates titles on the
assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King to be next on
Odonian's book list.

Naiman's journey from computer book writer and editor to independent
publisher (with a stop to do a few years in advertising) has been one of
unclouded focus. He asserts that his mission is to "publish the
truth...[since] so many people around the world are being brutalized."
And for a man whose personal heroes include Malcolm X, it is no wonder
Naiman seeks pointed words for potent ideas. Aside from what he cites as
the more bothersome details of publishing, Naiman affirms that he is
doing what he loves, and looks forward to the day when he will be
writing Real Stories, as well as publishing them.

- Kristin Spence

****************************************************************

The Ultimate Theme Park
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Michael Crichton got sidetracked on the way to writing the definitive
book about Benjamin Franklin. He got this crazy idea: Why not write a
book about a super-rich developer who builds a theme park full of
dinosaurs recreated from scraps of DNA? Encouraged by Mike Backes, a
writer friend with a knack for high-tech stories, Jurassic Park was
born.

Steven Speilberg, king of big-screen high-tech, has picked up where the
book left off. The Hollywood version of Crichton's best seller, starring
Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, is due this June.

Backes was hired to help build a cinematic recreation. of the dinosaur
theme park. The film's plot revolves around a systems breakdown that
sends Jurassic Park's fragile, computer-controlled ecosystem into an
treacherous tailspin. From the rail-bound cars that cruise the park to
the massive control room that monitors its every corner, computing power
is ubiquitous at Jurassic Park, so fixing the system involves some
pretty serious hacking.

Backes and his cohorts also used some serious hacking to create the
system behind the system. More than $2 million worth of Silicon Graphics
and Macintosh workstations helped design the complex monitoring systems
that make the set look realistic. To create the effect of a major storm
hitting the island-bound park, for example, engineers took actual
weather satellite maps and data, used Adobe Photoshop to insert a 3-D
model of the island, then tracked a hurricane across it.

The dinosaurs themselves mark a major advancement in realistic 3-D
animation, according to the film's producers. Although they won't
discuss details, the dinosaurs were created by effects wizard Stan
Winston in association with George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic.

Backes said that everything imagined in the film could be done one day.
"It's a just matter of computing power to rebuild the dinosaurs' DNA,"
he said. "The rest of the system, well, we already built it, really."

- John Battelle

****************************************************************

Tired/Wired
^^^^^^^^^^^
Tired                                           Wired

Cindy Crawford                                  Jane March
REM                                             The Jayhawks
Clinton                                         Gore
Car phones                                      Videophones
Manhattan                                       The WELL
Chaos Theory                                    Complexity Theory
Nintendo                                        3DO
Beaudrillard                                    McLuhan
Japan                                           Indonesia
NPR                                             BBC
Energizer bunny campaign                        Sega campaign
California real estate                          Intellectual property
Performance                                     Painting
John Hughes                                     Francis Coppola
Virtual anything                                Virtual anything
Southwestern                                    Ethiopian

****************************************************************

A Report From the Creeping Tendrils of Fringe Culture
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Neurozine" is a sharp mix of
cynicism and optimism about where technology is headed. Editors Mark
Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair started bOING bOING in Boulder, CO, in
1988 - where it lived until moving to Los Angeles in 1992. Citing the
seminal Factsheet Five as inspiration - in Frauenfelder's words, "the
hub 'zine of the 'zine network" -bOING bOING began as a "magazine for
high-tech neophiles with a sense of humor." Initially extracting its
flavor from margin-walking movements such as cyberpunk and the Church of
the Subgenius, bOING bOING continues to mutate.

"The only thing that we can say about the future of bOING bOING is that
we intend to propel ourselves along the creeping tendrils of fringe
culture," Frauenfelder said. "We like the edges, where new things pop-up
fast. That's the fun of doing a magazine like bOING bOING. We never know
what kind of sticky mind-virus will show up on our doorstep to readily
infect our novelty-craving nervous systems."

In any particular issue, one might find music, 'zine and conference
reviews as well as articles on artificial life, interactive media
designers or robot builders who get grant money from the city of Austin,
Texas, as well as . The October, '92 issue created a stir as it
lampooned cult-fave rag Mondo 2000 in a delicious parody on the back
cover and inside pages. Subscriptions: $14 from 818-980-2009.

- Will Kreth

****************************************************************

The Newspaper Industry Gets Its First R&D Lab
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The railroads fell victim to a classic example of forgetting which
business you're in: Failing to see themselves as transport companies,
they were out-competed by trucking companies who saw that their business
was not trucks, but transportation.

The same thing could happen to the newspaper industry, according to
Roger Fidler, director of new media at Knight Ridder, a huge newspaper
chain based in Miami. "If we don't do more R&D, we will lose our
industry," Fidler said.

In an extremely unusual move for the stodgy newspaper business, Knight
Ridder executives last fall invested a goodly chunk of cash (rumors put
the figure in the millions) to create the Knight Ridder Information
Design Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., the industry's first research and
development skunkworks charged with designing the information products
of the future.

Fidler, who is writing a book about change in media (Mediamorphosis, due
out this spring), said his lab will focus on innovative ways to deliver
the information commonly found in newspapers. Fidler has already gained
a measure of fame with a prototype "tablet newspaper," a clipboard-like
device that presents the news not as static print on paper, but as an
interactive, digital computer file delivered each morning via your cable
hookup or telephone line. Other possible projects are news interfaces
for personal digital assistants like Apple's forthcoming Newton.

Like Xerox PARC or the Bellcore research consortium, the Knight Ridder
Information Design Laboratory will be a center for nurturing ideas. A
separate Knight Ridder unit will then market them.

Even though the newspaper industry hasn't changed its delivery vehicle
for centuries, the idea seems to be catching on. "I've been getting
calls from all the newspaper groups," Fidler said. "They all want to
know if they can work with us."

- John Batteller

****************************************************************

Make It So
^^^^^^^^^^
Admit it: Arcade games have hit a wall. That clutch-the-joy-stick-and-
stand-at-the-video-terminal interface is getting real old. It's time to
move to the Next Generation.

Edison Brothers Entertainment agrees. By late 1993 it plans to introduce
fully immersive virtual reality games based on the runaway hit series
"Star Trek: The Next Generation." To be anchored in our country's most
revered cultural centers - malls - these centers will be a dramatic
departure from the typical quarter-slogging video game haunts of
yesteryear (many of which, by the way, St. Louis-based Edison Brothers
owns and operates). Edison won't tell us how much a trip into the "Star
Trek" world will cost, but it has licensed actual footage from Paramount
Pictures ("Star Trek's" producer) and claims the ride will be fully
interactive.

- John Battelle

****************************************************************

Lost In Japan? Not With This Gadget
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Come the weekend, Minoru Saitoh and his girlfriend Junko jump in
Minoru's Honda del Sol and head out of Tokyo. They're not always sure
where they'll end up, but they never get lost.

In a country where road signs are few and far between, this is some
achievement. But then Minoru and Junko do have digital help.

A liquid-crystal screen mounted on the two-seater's dash displays a
colorful road map. A small circle in the center of the screen shows them
where they are at all times. A red arrow points in the direction they're
traveling.

For novelty-loving Japanese, in-car navigation systems have become a hot
item. Their popularity reflects the uniqueness of Japanese car culture.
For one thing, most Japanese use their cars for joy-riding rather than
commuting. (It has been calculated that if all the cars registered in
Japan were to hit the road at the same time, the distance between them
would be about four feet.)

A second feature of Japanese car culture is the amount of money that
young men like Minoru lavish on cars and electronic accessories.
Anywhere else in the world, cars laden with such desirable options would
be an open invitation to larceny. But in law-abiding Japan, stealing
other people's cars is simply not done.

At 27, Minoru still lives with his parents, even though he holds a high-
paying job in a large electronics firm. This arrangement leaves him
plenty of cash (plus the incentive to get out of the house on weekends).
He spends much of his money on monthly payments for the del Sol and its
expensive extras.

The idea of car navigation has been around for at least 10 years. Honda
claims to have been the first company to get a navigation system on the
road. But the system suffered from one serious drawback - it was
irredeemably analog. Introduced as an option for the 1980 Accord, the
system bombed.

Clearly, if car navigation systems were to be a success, maps would have
to go digital. Digital maps allow error checking and correction. But the
cost of digitizing the cartography of an entire country was more than
one company could afford. So in true Japanese style, the car companies
got together with the electronics firms and - with government blessing -
formed the Japan Digital Road Map Association. By 1988, the job was
done.

Where to store all the information thus generated? The obvious answer
was on compact disc. Four CD-ROM discs are sufficient to hold maps
covering all of Japan, at several different scales.

And how do you determine the car's position? In the form of signals from
the 20-plus satellites that make up the Pentagon's $10 billion Global
Positioning System. Triangulate a fix from any three of these satellites
and you know where you are to within 100 feet.

Pioneer has sold 20,000 units of its in-car navigation system. The
deluxe version sells for $4,175. In addition to telling you where you
are, it can also call up information on nearby restaurants and hotels.
And, to distract young drivers from Japan's endless traffic jams,
Pioneer has also issued discs containing games, quizzes, horoscopes and
the inevitable karaoke.

The cheaper version - a snip at just $1,915 - plays wallet-sized memory
cards rather than discs. You need 32 of them to cover the whole country,
but at $40 a pop most people tend to buy only two or three.

In Pioneer's wake comes the rest of the Japanese electronics industry.
Sony, NEC and Toshiba are just a few of the firms that have recently
announced GPS-based car navigation systems.

Will these products become the next wave of Japanese exports to hit the
US? Not yet, since most of the US has yet to be digitally mapped. It is
an ironic legacy of the cold war that the US should have digital maps
for the likes of Novosibirsk, but not for Nevada; for Moscow, but not
for Manhattan.

General Motors does have car navigation experiments underway at car
rental fleets in Los Angeles and Orlando, Fla. But it will take US firms
a few years to catch up with Minoru and Junko.

- Bob Johnstone

****************************************************************

A New Breed Of Designer
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
To look at the magazines David Carson designs - from Surfer to Beach
Culture to the new Ray Gun - you might imagine a tough guy who surfs all
day and stays up all night listening to strange new music. But the real
Carson is a calm, reasonable and thoughtful man. This designer, whose
influence reaches far beyond the beach and new music scenes, once
studied for a time in Switzerland, home of clean sans-serif types and
grid-like modernist layouts - as full of open space as the Alps
themselves.

"I could do Modern Maturity, or Golf Digest," he said. "They wouldn't
look like Ray Gun or Beach Culture, but there would be some tweaks."
Among the designers he most admires is Fabien Baron, who recently lent a
stately open new look to Harper's Bazaar.

Computers have changed the world of magazine design, but not in the
mainstream. The New Yorker has been translated to, but not transformed
by, the Macintosh. Carson's work is testimony to the unexpected and
surprising consequences of technology: that a neato, cute machine like
the Macintosh could enable grit and grunge, sand and sin.

Carson's magazines are Macintosh-inspired palimpsests, where the effects
of scanners and programs such as Photoshop produce a mysterious and
funky depth. They are sooty windows with out-of-focus details that
become abstract graphics and layers of type fading into each other, as
if someone has wired a cable full of channels onto a single TV screen.
Words double or echo, drift or stop short, as if someone were rapidly
tuning a remote control.

Carson prefers deadpan, tough, tattoo-like typefaces, wiry as the
killers in a film noir. He often samples the new generation of
underground typefaces created at art schools, showcasing them like a
Bill Graham of grunge bands. For Ray Gun, his visuals fit the music
reviewed within. The pages are like a multi-track recording, a kind of
controlled sampling of visual noise from a photograph, manipulated,
stretched or squeezed. Call him the house party DJ of imagery.

There is a method to Carson's apparent madness. Almost all his
treatments are inspired by an idea or phrase in the writing or subject.
And he considers his audience. Younger readers, Carson observed without
approval or disapproval, have grown up watching MTV and reading USA
Today. They have shorter attention spans. So articles tend to fit onto a
single page. And even longer articles in Ray Gun share one thing with
those in The New Yorker: They never "jump" to the magazine's back pages,
but proceed unbroken. Ray Gun also lacks page numbers, a fact, Carson
noted, that went unremarked upon in the 50-odd letters the editors
received after the first issue.

Readers must tilt the magazines to read headlines, "knock outs," and
even the articles themselves, and squint through layers of type. But
these are engaging facts: They make the magazine, Carson said, more like
an object - more solid.

- Phil Patton

****************************************************************

Cable Television Calling
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
While all those cry-Baby Bells fight over who has what rights to which
cellular phone markets, cable TV giants like Cox Enterprises have been
quietly laying thousands of miles of coaxial cable. And if Cox has
anything to do with it, there'll be more than I Love Lucy reruns
traveling that high-bandwidth cable.

Cox is testing new digital technology that uses the company's cable
television lines as the transmission media for mobile telephone calls.
It works like this: The caller's phone sends out radio signals that are
recieved by "microcells," little boxes the size of a four-slice toaster
that are strategically located along Cox's cable network. (Much of the
cable TV network is strung on telephone poles, right alongside standard
phone lines.) The microcells then send the call along the cable network,
where it is transferred to the local phone company's switches. The local
phone company then provides local and long-distance connections, if
necessary.

Cox, a diversified media company with holdings in newspapers, radio,
television and even an independent phone company, has applied to the FCC
for rights to radio frequencies necessary to make the system work. (The
FCC recently freed-up some frequencies for what it calls Personal
Communications Services, or PCS.) If approved, Cox's new phone services
may force down the market cost of mobile telephones and give the Baby
Bells a run for their cellular money. But don't expect to see much
happen until the FCC makes a firm decision as to who gets to play in
this new market. That could take another year, at least.

- John Battele

****************************************************************

Visit to the Electronic Cafe
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
To the eight volunteers stuck inside the glassy Biosphere 2 ark in the
desert of Arizona, the Electronic Cafe, in Santa Monica, Calif., is a
sanity saver. Nothing is supposed to enter or leave the Biosphere 2 for
two years, except information and energy. To "get out of hut," the
biospherians travel by wire to Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz's
Electronic Cafe. As customers sip espresso, the biospherians stroll in
via picture phone.

On an electronic visit last October, two biospherians playing percussion
instruments jammed with Cafe regulars. "I miss the cafe scene," said
Linda Leigh, one of the biospherians. "When we hear there's an
Electronic Cafe event coming up, it's like a chance to go out for a
night." Besides meeting new faces, the biospherians can participate in
regular Electronic Cafe events such as telepoetics, a monthly
interactive poetry reading. Every New Year's Eve for the past four
years, the Electronic Cafe "e-links" to parties around the world as the
year's end advances around the globe. Roy Walford, another biospherian,
has been e-linking (via the cafe) into the travels of his friend,
performance artist Barbara T. Smith, as she wanders the world and beams
back live video letters from places like Katmandu, Nepal.

- Kevin Kelly

****************************************************************

Make That a Virtual Taco
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A recent Supreme Court decision - on fast food franchises, of all things
- casts doubts as to whether copyright will be the primary means of
establishing intellectual property rights in virtual environments.

The prophets of virtual reality promise that we will soon have access to
convincing computer-based simulations. Projections for the uses of VR
technology range from long-distance video conferences to armchair tours
of other continents and planets. With a potentially enormous industry
and some very large investments at stake, prudent investors will hunt
down all effective methods of keeping their VR assets from being copied
without charge.

A major legal tool for defining the "virtual real estate" of the future
will likely be found in an esoteric branch of trademark law known as
"trade dress" protection. Normally, trademarks are brand names or logos
indicating the source of a commercial product. But through trade dress,
trademarks have been extended to brand-indicating design features of the
products themselves, such as two-tone drug capsule designs or the
swishes and swirls on the sides of sneakers.

The boldest use of trade dress law yet is to create property rights in
the decorative motifs of fast-food restaurant chains such as White
Castle, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell. This trend was recently endorsed and
furthered by the Supreme Court in the case of Two Pesos v. Taco Cabana,
where the owner of a chain of Tex-Mex fast-food outlets sued a
competitor for copying its design. Before the Two Pesos decision, a
franchiser claiming to own the very decor of its restaurant had to prove
that customers associated that decor with the franchised services. But
the Supreme Court ruled that a distinctively designed restaurant
interior can be treated as "property" under the trademark law from the
day the restaurant is opened, regardless of whether customers ever
perceive it as a trademark.

With this ruling, trade dress law has developed sufficiently to apply
directly to virtual realities. Fictional or fantasy VR environments can
be configured as one immense collection of trade dress features, from
the color scheme to all of the surface decorations and arbitrarily
chosen shapes.

This possibility of configuring a virtual reality almost entirely as a
trade dress property asset, coupled with the extremely high costs of
developing sophisticated virtual reality environments for at least the
next few years, means that "ownability" of the environment and its
contents will likely be one of the prime design criteria for virtual
realities. An investor may be willing to contribute a much larger amount
if the VR producer makes assurances that the resulting VR world will be
protected from knock-offs under trade dress laws.

Will there be any laws barring investors and VR producers from marking
off all of VR as property under the trade dress laws? One major limit of
trademark law will doubtless apply - the "functionality" exception. One
cannot own the general shape of a chair used in a restaurant today under
the trade dress laws, because that would prevent others from using
chairs of any kind. One can only own the use of a certain design of
chair as part of a certain restaurant environment. This limit should
carry straight over to VR - VR producers will be able to stake out
ownership of the motifs and design concepts for entire environments and
their contents, but not the underlying or basic functional structures.

- Lance Rose, Esq.

****************************************************************

Yeah, but will it improve the food? Get yer seat-back service here!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The first Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) network to be
installed in a commercial airliner will debut with the roll-out of
Boeing's first 777 passenger planes in 1995. So what's the point of
putting broadband fiber inside a passenger jet? Three words: Seat-back
services. Passengers on these flights will be able to watch up to nine
pay-per-view movies (displayed using digital video), play video games,
send or receive e-mail or faxes, shop for duty-free goods, or listen to
any of 24 CD-quality audio channels.

In addition, the FDDI network will be used to monitor the plane's auto-
diagnostic information and relay pertinent data about the mechanical
condition of the plane to crews on the ground. If the plane develops a
problem with a low-level of coolant or a part malfunction, for example,
an electronic message could be sent to the plane's destination ground
crew - where they could prepare or obtain the necessary part in advance
of the plane's landing.

Closer to the present, Northwest Airlines and partner Hughes/Avicom
International are set to debut WorldLink - a new interactive passenger
seat-back service that provides multiple movie channels, video games,
duty-free shopping, or travel information about the passenger's
destination. While not fiber-based, WorldLink will be the first system
to provide this level of interactivity on a commercial airliner - in not
only first class, but business and coach as well. The system is expected
to go on-line in Northwest's fleet of 747s by the end of March.

- Will Kreth

****************************************************************

Playin' D'Cuckoo MidiBall at San Francisco's Fashion Center
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Renowned for their hot sound, cool electronic marimbas, and high-energy
multimedia show, the cybertribal world-funk ensemble D'Cuckoo has
invented the D'Cuckoo MidiBall to allow the audience to jam with the
band. The ball triggers sounds and images as the audience bounces it
this way and that ... a portent of things to come in the world of
interactive musical performance.

****************************************************************

Hypertexture
^^^^^^^^^^^^
CD-ROM is caught in a famous technology Catch 22: Developers are
hesitant to create titles dependent on hardware that few people own,
while consumers complain that there are too few titles to justify the
purchase of that hardware. The recent introduction of significantly
cheaper CD-ROM players may stimulate the software market (you can get a
good drive nowadays for less than $400), but a group of Colorado-based
artists has a better idea: give it away.

Hypertexture, to be released in the first quarter of 1993, promises to
be an interactive multimedia magazine of art, music, criticism, and
political activism. The proposed list of contents includes 30 minutes of
audio material, a library of stills, animations, and digital video, and
databases packed with information geared toward artists. Supported by a
mix of grants and donations, the Hypertexture staff also has plans to
produce a series of training materials to help other small groups
publish in this new medium. The first release will be Macintosh-only,
but a DOS version is already in the works. For more information on
Hypertexture write to: PO Box 7266, Boulder, Colo., 80306-7266.

- Gareth Branwyn



Copyright (c) 1993 Wired magazine