June 14, 2005

Whatever happened to... Jaron Lanier?

Most of my other "Whatever happened to..." articles are about long lost movie stars, like Jim "Kung Fu Jim" Kelly ("...Nice move. My momma uses it against the local gangbangers every day") or Sho Kosugi. But what about forgotten techie stars?

Like Jaron Lanier. Cover of Scientific American in 1984--the geek's equivalent of being Playmate of the Month. White dreadlocked boy genius invents Virtual Reality and all that. What happened to him?

Remember when VR was the big thing? Remember what VRML stands for? Flashback to 1996: Netscape had just bought Paper Software, and I remember a slightly awkward Mike McCue being shown around the building by three gorgeous marketing/PR types.

But it turns out that Lanier is still alive and well, and doing more music than coding these days, at least according to his News page. And VR? Lanier's "Top Eleven Reasons VR has not yet become commonplace explains it all.

Posted by jameshom at June 14, 2005 03:15 PM | TrackBack
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