I’m still in Lafayette, Louisiana, attending the IEEE VR 2009 conference. We’re eating lots of hamburgers but the conference is just fabulous, I’ll try to talk to you about that soon.
In the meantime, I’ve had the chance to bump into VR Geeks idol Jaron Lanier, early VR pioneer and “inventer” of the term “virtual reality”.
He just received an IEEE VR award for his career, and his acceptance speech was really inspiring. Maybe the organizers will put a video of that online ?
Anyway, during the day I jumped on him as he was passing by the Virtools booth and interviewed him with some questions. I’m sure I could have thought about better questions but I didn’t really prepare for that and was quite overwhelmed =)
His last answer is a summary of what he said during the reception tonight and I’m sure you’ll like it =)
“VR is the coolest technology you can be working on!”
I couldn’t agree more =)
PS: Here’s the article I was talking about.
OK, but where’s the interview?
Cool, it’s always great to hear something new from Jaron! He is real VR guru! =)
What’s your problem Julien ? =)
Yeah !!!
So cool !!!
What is he doing now ? He has his own company ?
Who’s next interviewed ?… I.Sutherland ? 😉
I was planning on interviewing M. Turing but he couldn’t make it ..
Excellent spontaneous interview!
It’s really interesting to hear Jaron Lanier say that VR has had its ups and downs, but that this time around, it is being experienced daily by the masses, mainly through the Wii. Today VR technology is indeed widely available, popular, and is no longer seen as an expensive, complicated niche occupation for ‘geeks’ =) .
Also, the statement on the fact that VR is all about the ‘experience’ provided and not about technology (which might as well be forgotten) is so true!
Keep up the good work! Can’t wait for more =)
Oh you’re so lucky! I remember reading about Jaron in the early days and have a news clip about him on video tape somewhere that was recorded in the late 90’s. Interesting stuff on your site here!