Robert Jacobson <cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu> (05/12/91)
Recently I had occasion to speak at the ComForum sponsored by the National Engineering Consortium. The NEC, headquartered in Chicago, is a sort of unofficial think tank for the telecommnications industry. During this event, a composite video was shown, to illustrate the many new services being created by the telephone companies. (The tape, by the way, is available from the NEC, under terms I do not know.) On the tape there was the obligatory wallscreen monitor (a sort of giantized version of the Knowledge Navigator), interminably dull documentaries on voice-actuated this and that being developed in laboratories, and a couple of dazzling but (so far as I could tell) experiments being carried out at various universities in the video field. What really caught my eye was a 12 minute human interest story, set in the year 2010 AD, about the collaborative design of a toy rabbit. Oh, so trivial, you say. But the film actually became more complex. The apparently Japanese designer had a Caucasian wife and a Eurasion daughter; the yuppie toy company executives, supposedly (one thinks) in Los Angeles, are eventually joined by their Asian boss. So where is everyone? The point sinks in pretty quickly: in the telecommunications world of the future, at least on this video, location and nationality are less and less relevant. By the way, the designer's daughter, at home while she recuperates from a cold, solves the design problem stumping development of the multimillion dollary cuddly. Happy Endings all around. Simply the best -- and most human -- promotional tape ever made by a telco. So are you surprised to learn it was produced by NTT, the Japanese telephone company? Not me. Bob Jacobson