Interview with JARON LANIER

 Virtual  Reality  (VR)  has moved from the California labs to find itself in the

public eye. Various exhibits and  'Cyberthons',  numerous  articles,  television

spots, (WGBH's NOVA and National Geographic) have brought this infant technology

to the mainstream .

VR  proves  to  be  a  powerful  medium of the future.  Unlike present media, VR

relies and functions best as a creative tool, not passive mind control.

                                                  -ESLF

  The Eastern Seaboard Liberation Front (ESLF)    presents...

  --------------------------------------------

          "In the future I see virtual reality as a medium where people

           improvise worlds instead of words, making up dreams to share

           an objective form of the Jungian dream. You might even call

           it the collective conscious"

Interview with JARON LANIER

from Omni, January 1991

           \--------------------------+-------------------------/

On the living room wall of Jaron Lanier's  disheveled  bungalow  in  Palo  Alto,

California,  hangs a poster of the four-armed Hindu goddess Kali. Her 16 fingers

and 4 thumbs dexterously play a sitar. Most Westerners would find the  image  an

exotic  one,  but in the context of virtual reality, the emerging field of which

Lanier is the unquestioned guru, Kali looks as normal as Betty Crocker.  Virtual

(artificial)  reality  is  the  hot new computer technology that lets you do the

impossible - from swimming through the heart's  aorta  to  walking  the  dog  on

Saturn's  rings.  Technically  virtual  reality is a full-color, full-motion 3-D

environment manu factured by computer and displayed inside  a  pair  of  goggles

worn  by  the  virtual  traveler.  Psychologically  it's  poised  to  become  an

open-ended, no-holds-barred experience that enables people to create  their  own

dreams in Technicolor and then let their frie nds jump in.

VPL  Research,  Inc., of which Lanier is the founder, CEO, and spiritual leader,

is the first company to bring virtual reality technology to  the  market.  VPL's

customers  include  NASA,  Apple  Computer,  Pacific  Bell, and an assortment of

universities and rese arch labs. On a visit to VPL's offices  overlooking  swank

Redwood  City  sailboat marina, interviewer Doug Stewart explored a sample world

that Lanier had spent  barely  an  hour  mousing  together  on  a  Macintosh  II

computer. To enter this world, Stewart pulled a pair of VPL's cumbersome, opaque

EyePhones  and  a  wired-up Data-Glove made of black Lycra. Sensors on the glove

and goggles steadily sent a silent  flood  of  signals  to  a  powerful  Silicon

Graphics  computer  sitting  on the floor. Stewart instantly found himse lf in a

room filled with semifamiliar objects: a red  apple  on  a  table,  a  bunch  of

purple  grapes, a banana spinning lazily end over end in midair, a yellow rubber

duck bobbing in a rippling water of a hot tub. Periodically a small  pterodactyl

swooped down a spiraling chimney and out of the room.

"Reach  for the grapes," Lanier suggested to Stewart, who groped with his gloved

hand and watched as a virtual representation of his bending  fingers  closed  on

the  bunch.  He  moved his fist, and then the grapes moved with it. Leaning back

in  satisfaction,  Stewart  saw  the  room  abruptly  enveloped  in  red.   He's

accidentally  backed  his  head  into the apple. In minutes Stewart had mastered

the "fly!" gesture  (pointing  a  gloved  forefinger  while  curling  the  thumb

under),  rocketed  up  the chimney, and was soaring thr ough the gray billows of

distant computer-generated cloud.

A self-taught thirty-year-old with neither a college  nor  high-school  diploma,

Lanier  is,  not  surprisingly,  a  onetime video game designer. Virtual reality

(VR), however, promises to be much more than the ultimate  wraparound  adventure

game.   VR   systems   wou   ld   be   the  perfect  command  post  for  sending

remote-controlled robots where humans prefer not to go  (a  melted-down  nuclear

reactor,  the asteroid belt). Medical students could practice surgery on virtual

cadavers that spurt virtual blood after a misplaced in  cision.  Such  uses  are

speculative so far, but few people doubt the technology's potential.

No  one  offers more enthusiastic speculation than Lanier. A champion of virtual

reality as a key to unlocking humankind's imagination, Lanier  is  probably  the

first  man  with  full-length  dreadlocks to be profiled on page one of The Wall

Street Journal. Bea rlike, with heavy-lidded blue eyes  and  a  soft,  sometimes

dreamy  voice, Lanier dominates a room. Stewart interviewed him over five hectic

days and nights punctuated by midnight drives, unexpected visits by  delegations

of Japanese industrialists, sudden aft ernoon naps, dinners with computer moguls

eager to pick Lanier's brain, and the occasional 5:OO A.M. staff meeting.

Lanier,  the  hacker-turned-capitalist,  struck  Stewart  as  more  hacker  than

capitalist.  With  breathtaking  nonchalance,   Lanier   disregarded   scheduled

appointments  and  housekeeping  details  (he  even  had his unlisted home phone

inexplicably disconnected midweek ) or changing clothes over the course of  five

days.  Most  of  the  interviews  took  place  in  the living room of his rented

bungalow. Lanier is an accomplished improvisational musician, and the  room  was

crowded  with  more  than  1OO  instruments,  from  bagpipes  to  xylophones  to

unidentified horns and gourds. During breaks Lanier repaired to his grand  piano

and sent fluent, atonal chords crashing through the room.

The  Pied  Piper  of  a  growing  technological  cult,  Lanier  has  many of the

trappings of a young rock star: the nocturnal activity, attention-getting  hair,

incessant  demands  on  his time. He is casual, giggly, his heedlessness verging

at times on arrogance. Y et during the interviews he seemed oddly unspontaneous.

When he found something amusing, which  was  often,  he  paused  a  beat  before

issuing  a  staccato  burst  of  giggles.  Hearing  good  news  on the phone, he

screamed in delight but hesitated before whipping an object across the  room  in

celebration.  (Hmmm. Should I throw this pen or shouldn't I?) Lanier behaved, in

fact, as if he were observing himself from a distance.

Omni: What is virtual reality?

Lanier: It's an alternate reality filling the same  niche  otherwise  filled  by

physical  reality. It's created when people wear a kind of computerized clothing

over the sense organs. If  you  generate  enough  stimuli  outside  one's  sense

organs  to  indicate  the  e xistence of a particular alternate world, then that

person's nervous system will kick into gear and treat that stimulated  world  as

real.  You might be in a Moorish temple, or a heart that's pumping. You might be

watching a representation of hydrogen bonds forming. In each case the  world  is

entirely  computer generated. Now, imagine that you had the power to change that

would quickly - without limitations. If you suddenly wanted to make  the  planet

three  times larger, put a crystal cave in the middle with a g iant goat bladder

pulsing inside of that and tiny cities populating the  goat  bladder's  surface,

and  running  between  each of the cities were solid gold railways carrying tiny

gerbils playing accordions - you could build that world instead of talking about

it!

Omni: Okay.... How does the computerized clothing work?

Lanier: The goggles put a small TV in front  of  each  eye  so  you  see  moving

images  in  three  dimensions. That's only the beginning. There is one key trick

that makes VR work: The goggles have a sensor allowing a computer to tell  where

your  head is facing. Wh at you see is created completely by the computer, which

generates a new image every twentieth of a second. When you  move  you  head  to

the  left, the computer uses that information to shift the scene that you see to

the right to compensate. This creates the illusion  that  your  head  is  moving

freely  in a stationary external space. If you put on a glove and hold your hand

in front of your face, you see a computer-generated hand in the  virtual  world.

If you wiggle your fingers, you see its fingers wiggle. The gl ove allows you to

reach  out and pick up an artificial object, say a ball, and throw it. Your ears

are covered with earphones. The computer can process sounds, either  synthesized

or  natural, so that they seem to come from a particular direction. If you see a

virtual fly buzzing around, that fly will actually sound as though  it's  coming

from  the  right  direction.  We also make a full body suit, a DataSuit, but you

can just have a flying head, which isn't really so bad. The hands and  head  are

the  business  ends  of the body - they interact most with the outside world. If

you wear just goggles and gloves, you can do most of the stuff you want  in  the

virtual world.

Omni: What about touch?

Lanier:  VPL is working on developing touch sensors. We've done experiments with

tactile feedback by putting vibration simulators  inside  the  fingertips.  When

you  fingertips  feel vibrations that match what you see in virtual reality, you

associate them with the surface of the virtual object. It's surprising how  many

sensations  you  can create with vibrations alone. Another way to simulate touch

would be with a grid of tiny elements that  move  back  and  forth  like  little

pistons  so  that  the  overall  grid can tak e on shapes. That's tough to build

because it would have to be very thin to fit onto the surface of a glove.  Touch

is  a  very complex activity. Tac-tile sensation is an action; it's not passive.

You're constantly nudging things with your fingers, rubbing,  squeezing  things,

feeling  their  weight  and  textures,  judging  the  position  of  your arm and

fingers, performing hundreds of subtle little  tests.  To  synthesize  the  full

sensation  of  picking  up an object in VR, you'd have to do a number of things,

all difficu lt, some perhaps impossible.

Omni: Who are your customers?

Lanier: Most are companies and institutions with their own  technical  know-how.

Some  use VR to test designs before building them. Some are trying to understand

scientific or engineering data better. Some are people who want to have fun.

Omni: Millionaires who want to play three-D games?

Lanier: There's only been one example of that so far, which I  don't  encourage.

But  there's  nothing  wrong  with  a  technology  that unites work and play. VR

allows you to do work that you couldn't  do  otherwise  by  making  it  playful.

People in the business worl d are sick of being told that things that aren't fun

are  fun,  like  using a spreadsheet. Virtual reality actually is fun. You might

think of it as a general-purpose simulator, or as a fantasy  machine.  But  what

makes  it so special is that you and others wearing VR clothing can be networked

together to  share  the  same  alternate  reality.  The  content  is  completely

variable  -  you could be on top of Mount Everest or the bottom of the sea - but

the environme nt is the same for everyone in it. You and your  VR  partners  can

shake  hands,  dance  together, play ball. You can construct buildings together.

Virtual reality is an epistemological milestone, a new reality that's shared  as

the physical world is. Yet it is open and unhindered like dreams.

Omni: What are some applications?

Lanier:  Each  application  by  itself  is  a  whole-amazing world, so in a way,

anytime you talk about a particular application you're somehow losing  sight  of

the overall picture.

Omni: Still, don't your customers view it as an efficient  tool  rather  than  a

mindboggling experience?

Lanier:  Absolutely.  It's extremely efficient. An architect can make a building

real before it exists and bring people through it. In a demo with  Pacific  Bell

recently,  two  architects  got  together over the phone and explored a proposed

day-care center in V R. One showed proposed features to the  other,  they  could

see  each  other  moving  around  in  the room and could make design changes. By

holding the glove a certain way, they could  change  their  bodies  to  take  on

characteristics  of children's bodies. So they we re able to run around and test

features like a water fountain from a child's perspective.  Another  example  is

city  planning.  Tom  Furness  is  heading a lab at the University of Washington

that's studying VR. We're helping them put a version of Seattle in to a VR  that

you  can walk around in. You can add skyscrapers to the skyline to see what they

feel like aesthetically, whose views are blocked, and so on.

Omni: How can virtual reality advance medical technology?

Lanier:  We  take  information  about  the human body from scanning machines and

turn it into objects in virtual  reality.  This  means  doctors  can  put  their

patients  through  a  scanner,  then  walk in to virtual reality and pick up the

patient's bones and internal organs. Suppose the patient has a serious deformity

or injury. A surgeon could get a feeling  for  the  three-D  structure  of  that

person's  body  to  help  plan  surgery.  This  is still in the earliest testing

phases, but we've done one project with the San Diego Supercomputer Center where

we had people crawling around inside patients and looking at  the  structure  of

their  brains.  You  can  have two physicians inside the brain at the same time,

and they can talk about what they see. One can point to the structure  and  say,

"There's an abscess here.

Omni: What's the smallest world anyone's made a virtual visit to?

Lanier:  Fred  Brook  and  Henry  Fuchs at the University of North Carolina have

done some marvelous work letting chemists pick  up  molecules  whose  atoms  are

about  first  size.  You  can  figure  out  certain chemical problems quicker by

holding on to a sort of robot arm that comes out of the ceiling and pushes  back

at  you  to  simulate  a  molecule's  forces.  So  you  can literally feel where

chemical bonds could occur. A complicated organic molecule is something  like  a

handful  of  little  magnets  in  a  cluster.  Their  forces  combine  to form a

complicated, irregular field. As you move a new magnet  over  the  big  cluster,

sometimes  it's attracted, sometimes repelled. In a sim ilar way, a molecule has

a landscape of atomic forces around it. There might be  little  patches  exactly

complementary,  so  that  two  molecules  will bond at one point. That's easy to

study in simple molecules, but it's much harder  with  large  organic  molecules

like  an  enzyme.  The  systems  that  the  North  Carolina  lab  and others are

developing are tremendous new tools for seeing and feeling how  these  molecules

behave.  Some  mathematicians  and  physicists  are  using it to make intangible

worlds real. We're doing  some  work  with  actuaries.  They  can  fly  over  an

abstract  forest  that  represents  various  insurance statistics. It helps them

notice patters in the data more easily than they could  on  even  a  very  large

computer  screen.  Computer programmers could look at a whole program at once. A

large program might look like a  giant  Christmas  tree,  and  you  could  be  a

hummingbird flying around it. Landing on any one branch, you coul d see in great

detail  the  structure  of  that part of the program. From a distance, you could

learn to plan a very large program spatially.

Omni: Do people send you suggestions about uses you never dreamed of?

Lanier: Tons. Some of them are truly crazy. We've had  inquiries  about  putting

animals  in  virtual  reality  from people who design animal clothing. Ministers

call up to ask if we could use VR as a kind of methadone treatment. And  virtual

sex  -  you  should  see  how  stupid  my  mail is on this subject! A lot of the

inquiries don't make any sense, but it's important to be open-minded.

Omni: The National Enquirer reported that VPL was working on a spy glove.

Lanier: Yes! [Laughter] They said we were working with the CIA to make  a  robot

resembling  a  severed  hand  that could be remote-controlled by a DataGlove. It

would crawl into enemy territory, climb over fences,  steal  enemy  papers,  and

crawl back. It was sil ly.

Omni: Could virtual squash someday replace the real thing?

Lanier:  Absolutely.  Visually  a  simple squash game in low resolution might be

doable right now on an inexpensive system. As  for  force  feedback,  you  could

design  a  robot  that  pushes  back  at  your feet in a particular way. Perhaps

there'd be a robot arm with a racket handle that comes out of  the  wall.  You'd

grab  the  handle, it would jerk back when the ball was hit. When the simulation

is specific like this, you can go all-out and make it good.

What's hard is to build a general force-feedback machine.  Here  are  some  Rube

Goldberg  examples:  Imagine  having  tiny  rockets  over  your body with little

thrusters that are pushing back and forth at you so that any possible force  can

be applied to any part of you. Or imagine that there are all these little robots

all  around  you,  and like tiny bustlers, whenever you slam your hand down on a

virtual table, they run up to receive your  blow  just  before  your  hand  gets

there.  You  can  take  any  form  you want. You might pull your nose to make it

longer or choose from a drawer of extra snouts or  horns.  You  might  point  to

another  person or animal wandering around in the environment and turn up a knob

that says BLEND and gradually turn into them or something halfway b etween.

At VPL  we've  often  played  with  becoming  different  creatures  -  lobsters,

gazelles,  winged  angels. Taking on a different body in virtual reality is more

profound than merely putting on a  costume,  because  you're  actually  changing

your body's dynamics.

What  surprised  us  is  that  people  adapt  almost  instantly  to manipulating

radically different body images. They pick up virtual  objects  just  as  easily

with  a  human  one.  You'd  think your brain is hardwired to know your arm, and

that if suddenly it grew thr ee feet, your brain wouldn't be able to control it,

but that doesn't appear to be true.

I become curious about how far I could push this, and added fingers to  my  hand

and  limbs to my body. But how do you control this extra limb? Wiggle your nose?

Let's say you want a third, virtual arm in the middle of your  chest.  The  most

obvious  way  to  c  ontrol  it  is  to make its position an average of your two

physical arms, so its thumb is always halfway between your physical  thumbs  and

so  forth. Now, that's moderately interesting, but basically the new arm is just

something that gets in your way. Imagin e a more complicated way of  controlling

it:  a  bodysuit  that's  constantly  making dozens of measurements of different

parts of your body - a little bit of ankle, writs, neck - all convoluted by  the

computer  in a funny algorythm to control how far the elbow in a new virtual arm

is bent at any moment. You've essentially snuck in control of a new  limb  while

letting  each  individual  part  of  your physical body move freely. It's like a

hidden resource.

Omni: You'd consciously learn to control the new limb?

Lanier:  It's  too  complex  to  do  consciously.  You'd  learn  to  control  it

intuitively,  by  getting feedback. This suggests that you might help people who

are paralyzed have the experience of walking in virtual reality. Sensors  placed

on  uninjured  parts  of thei r bodies could let them control a complete body in

virtual reality, allowing paralyzed kids to play sports with other  kids.  Would

this  activity  keep  parts  of  the  brain  awake  that might otherwise atrophy

through lack of use? This is completely unknown righ t now. I haven't studied it

as a scientist; I've only hacked it as a technologist. The field is  crying  out

for more study of phenomena like this, which VPL is not set up to do.

We were thinking of selling a booklet, "1OO Dissertations for 5O Cents."

Omni: What about vacations, say, in a virtual Maui?

Lanier:  The  existence  of a virtual Maui will just make the physical Maui that

much more precious and desirable. I don't think virtual reality will ever  serve

as  a  substitute for the physical world. It's not as good. A virtual Maui could

never be a full si mulation. By putting it  into  a  computer,  you  remove  its

mystery; it's blander and clunkier. You turn it into a finite model.

Omni: Still, you talk about the awesome illusions possible.

Lanier:  The emotional character of virtual reality is completely different from

that of the physical world. VR is a craft you create. People  say,  "I  want  to

try  virtual  reality because I want the thrill of having these experiences wash

over me," but in fa ct the  experience  is  the  opposite  of  that.  It's  very

intentional.  A  better name for it, actually, might be intentional reality. The

physical world is thrilling because it's infinitely subtle: There's always  more

to  perceive.  It surrounds us with a sea of mystery. Those of us in science and

technology tend to live under the delusion that we mostly understand the  world,

that  there are just little patches that are mysterious. But in fact, we've just

constructed around us  a  small  set  of  things  that  we  underst  and.  Also,

particular  environments  in  VR will never be terribly exciting because they're

so readily available. That ornate silver drum over there is an  unusual  object,

which  gives  it  a  certain preciousness. If we were in virtual reality and you

saw one of those, it wouldn't mean a damned thing,  because  you  could  make  a

hundred  of  them  as  easily as one. So particular forms become mundane. What's

exciting are the frontiers of imagination, the waves  of  creativity  as  people

make up new things.

Omni: How is it possible to build a virtual world?

Lanier:  There's no one answer; anything's possible. We're working on technology

that will grab a part of the physical world - an architect's rendering or  brain

scan  - and translated that into the virtual world. Ultimately, though, the most

efficient way w ill be to  use  virtual  tools  you  find  on  the  inside.  For

instance,  if  you saw a big block of stone in a virtual reality, you might also

see a chisel that you could pick up with your virtual  hand  and  start  carving

with.  The  difference  is  that virtual tools will have super powers. You might

make an eyedropper that could touch an object and squeeze it  in,  then  squeeze

it  out  somewhere  else  to make copies of the original. You might have another

tool that stretched anything it came across and made it long. Some  tools  could

be  very expressive. This room is filled with musical instruments because I find

them to be the most eloquent tools ever made. I want to make tools for  VR  that

are  like  musical  instruments. You could pick them up and gracefully "play" re

ality. You might "blow" a distant mountain range with  an  imaginary  saxophone.

You'd  be  using gestures instead of building something stone by stone. When you

can improvise while inside it, making it up as fast as you think and  feel,  you

can  reach  other  people.  As  a  babies,  each of us has an astonishing liquid

infinity of imagination on the inside, that butts up against the  stark  reality

of  the physi cal world, which resists us. That the baby's imagination cannot be

realized is a fundamental indignity that we only learn  to  live  with  when  we

decide  to  call  ourselves  adults.  With virtual reality you have a world with

many of the qualities of the physica l world,  but  it  doesn't  resist  us.  It

releases  us  from  the  taboo against infinite possibilities. That's the reason

virtual reality electrifies people so much. In the future I see it as  a  medium

of  communications  where  people  improvise  worlds instead of words, making up

dreams  to  share.  An  ideal  VR  conversation  would  have   the   continuity,

spontaneity, expressiveness of a jazz jam but the literal content that's missing

from  music. Things being made would be objects - houses, chemical processes, or

whatever the conversation is about. It  would  be  a  reality  conversation,  an

objective  form of the Jungian dream, the collective unconscious. You might call

it the colle ctive conscious.

Omni: What about virtual sex? Is it a possibility or not?

Lanier: Oh, God [glumly].... I suppose virtual reality can contain any  kind  of

imagery,  so  why  not  sexual?  But the whole subject of virtual sex forces the

question. What is sexy? What is intimacy? There are  some  interesting  ways  to

have  intimacy  in  virtua  l reality. Consider trading eyes. You'd hook up your

virtual eyes to look out of another's head and vice versa, so that  you  control

each  other's point of view. It's hard at first, and you really have to learn to

dance together at a very intimate level to  make  it  work.  If  ind  that  more

interesting than the idea of virtual sex, which seems a little funny to me.

Omni:  When  it  reaches  the  mass  market,  might  people  settle  for touring

mass-market worlds?

Lanier: Once you get a taste for making up your own reality,  you  don't  go  in

for  passive  realities anymore. I'm not saying that everyone will make up stuff

all the time; there will be catalogs of old stuff. But I'll bet you a  pizza  in

thirty  years  that  pe ople turn out to be creative. We're living in one of the

strangest periods that has been  or  will  be.  In  the  twentieth  century  our

society  has  been  completely warped by technology, but the technology is still

astonishingly primitive. Considering that  kids  grow  up  with  TV,  a  one-way

medium,  there's  a  tendency toward noninteractivity. This is the first century

when technology has been the primary mode of people reaching each  other.  After

this, it will be interactive technology.

Omni: Who first made VR work?

Lanier:  A  lot  of  people. Ivan Sutherland [a computer graphics pioneer] built

head-mounted display with interactive graphics back in 1968. In  the  Seventies,

Tom  Furness,  who was working for the U. S. Air Force, made enormous strides in

the technology. My r ole has focused on turning this into a shared medium.  That

had  never  been  done  before.  Until  then,  there'd  be  one  person inside a

simulation just looking around in it. I also figured for  the  first  time.  Tom

Zimmerman,  who  was  VPL's first hardware engineer in the early Eighties, built

the first glove, and I integrated that  into  a  way  of  picking  up  imaginary

objects  in  space. Tom's original idea was to use the glove to play air guitar.

You could play music with a guitar  that  doesn't  exist.  I've  made  a  few  e

laborate  versions  of  this  glove  including one last year where I played Jimi

Hendrix solos.

Omni: A Wall Street Journal headline said virtual reality was "electronic LSD."

Lanier: That's stupid. The idea of spacing out in  virtual  reality  is  absurd.

It  would be like getting a model train in order to fall asleep over it. VR is a

medium; it affects the world outside your sense organs and that's  all.  It  has

nothing  to  do  with  brain  chemistry  or  your state of being. If one becomes

euphoric in virtual reality, it would  be  because  you  were  reacting  to  the

outside  world  that  way.  The  first moment of freedom is always ecstatic, but

after that you're on your own. Actually I'm  unqual  ified  to  talk  about  the

subject  because  I've  never  taken  LSD.  I don't take drugs and I don't drink

alcohol.

Omni: Why do you wear dreadlocks?

Lanier: I think of myself as a student who experiments with different things  at

different  times.  I had much more conventional hair two years ago, and I'm sure

I will again in two years. I had no intention of becoming  a  well-known  person

this  year.  One  nic e thing about my hair is that if I ever want to get out of

the hassles of being well-known, all I have to do is cut it off.  I  can  always

save it as a wig and put it back on when I give talks.

Omni: You're a high-school dropout?

Lanier:  Escapee  is  more  like it. I left it ar fifteen and then kind of snuck

into college - New Mexico State and other  places.  I  was  never  much  on  the

rituals  of By rituals I mean turning in papers and finishing degrees.  Computer

science is a splendid fi eld and most of the founders are still alive. I learned

by apprenticing myself to some of them. Marvin Minsky  was  extremely  important

to  me,  and  I used to just hang out with him. He is rethinking the whole world

from the bottom up all the time. That's an inspiring quality.

Omni: Did you invent make-believe worlds as a child?

Lanier: What I  remember  most  about  my  childhood  isn't  so  much  inventing

make-believe  worlds  as  being  overwhelmed  by  the  experience  of  different

physical places. My sensitivity to the mood of a particular room  was  sometimes

so intense I could hardly talk. I didn't know how to communicate that feeling to

others.  I  love  words  - I love to read, write, talk - but I think words leave

out almost everything. That frustration more than anything else -  feeling  that

what  we  can  share  with  other  people  is so much mor e limited than what we

actually experience - is what has driven me into this  technology.  Sometimes  I

think  we've  uncovered  a  new  planet, but one that we're inventing instead of

discovering. We're just starting to sight the shore of one  of  its  continents.

Virtual reality is an adventure worth centuries.

           \--------------------------+-------------------------/

O1/14/91  3:32 pm

WRD: 4845

CHAR: 23816

  thanks to K.I.M.

                                             -Shock LSD for the

                                              ESLF