Visualizing the Future #8: "To Infinity and Beyond!" Space and the Story of OneCosmos

Yesterday's post ended by concluding that future optimism often overlooks social changes by focusing on technological advances.  Clearly, progress is multifaceted but today I'm going to begin where we left off.  The 1939 World's Fair marked the beginning of 30 years of global mood swings.  From the optimistic uplift of the Fair to the despair of the WWII and Holocaust to the Cold War, the word plowed forward technologically, in large part fueled by the tension bewtween the USSR and the US.  Whether fueled by fear of ideological aggression or by the surplus of the post-war era, the dawn of the space era represents one of our species' finest achievements.

From the earliest of times, space has inspired us - looking up at the stars simply inspires wonder.   But rather than delve into the Space Program, I'd like to begin this with a personal story about a project I was involved in 2000 called OneCosmos.  It's an odd tale that I haven't talked about for a while.  Despite being having happened during the of the Dotcom Boom, (and perhaps because of it) the project shaped my life immensely.

In the summer of 2000, with the NASDAQ in freefall, I was working at a web design shop called OVEN Digital and got a call one day from a woman named Jane Ancel.  Jane had been at a company called USWeb, an early web development firm that had grown rapidly and gone public making many people very rich.  She explained that she had just joined the founder of USWeb at his newly funded startup which was a joint venture with Carl Sagan's widow Ann Druyan (remember yesterday's post mentioned that Sagan credited the 1939 Fair with sparking his interest in science?).  

Their goal was to use the web to teach people about science by making learning as captivating and immersive as  standing on the Holodeck of the Starship Enterprise.  The company (initially code-named "Project Voyager") had raised $23 million from Softbank and Crosspoint, and consisted of little more than a founding team and a Powerpoint.  I took a plane that night from New York  to meet Jane and the CEO, Joe Firmage, in Palo Alto the next morning.

So began a strange and wonderful journey.  Very strange.  I quickly learned that  Firmage had recently exited the company he started, USWeb (then valued at nearly $3B). This was the result of telling his colleagues, investors and the Silicon Valley elite that he had seen an alien.  Shortly thereafter he published an online book called "The Truth" which contained an account of his conversation with said alien who had arrived at the foot of his bed carrying a glowing blue orb. During their long discussion, Joe said, the alien had asked, "Why should you be allowed to travel to our galaxy?".  Upon hearing Joe's response (which was "Because I'm willing to die for it"), the blue orb sent a blast of energy into Joe's body and he awoke.  If this sounds bizarre (clearly it was) - here is a Dateline NBC show about it.

 

To continue the story, we knew this Day One and had yet to hear the details of the work that lay ahead. You would think alarm bells would have rung, but I suspended disbelief because he was well-funded and I was intensely curious.   When we met face-to-face, he described a massively ambitious project.  He wished to build a 3 dimensional model of the Known Physical Universe that could be accessed from a web browser and through which, people could travel to the outer reaches of the galaxy or into the center of a carbon atom.  This, he said, needed to be powered by a content management system that fed relevant published articles into the interface so that when you "traveled" to the moon, you saw the latest lunar research.  You also needed to be able to chat with other users, purchase items etc.  Finally (small detail) - there needed to be a fourth dimension of Time, so that you could see planets light years away as they had been long ago.  In other words, Build everything that was or ever had been. That's all. We had 6 months and a budget of $10 million.    We said "Yes" immediately.

Many of the finest designers, programmers, project managers and creatives in the world worked on it for OVEN as we targeted a New Year's Day 2001 launch.  A partial list includes Christopher Roy, Michael Felber, Nic Roope Iain Tait, Dmitriy Kolegayev, Thorbjorn Koening and dozens of others. I've included some screen shots below.  If you look closely, you'll see the product of the biggest challenge which was the information architecture - we identified 88 nodes that served as mooring points so that you could go from "Galaxy" to "Milky Way" to "Earth" to "Amphibians" - then directly to "Jupiter", back down to "Insects" and suddenly over to subsets of "Mathematics".  All of the navigation needed to be viewable from the interface and the transitions needed to be smooth and make sense. (tomorrow's post on Eames ' film " Powers of Ten" will illustrate this better).

The project was fascinating in many obvious ways (inlcuding the client, who in all fairness, was eccentric though largely rational, smart and a pleasure to work with).  None of the technology to make this work really existed, so we hacked things like Macromedia Director to make it work.  From a "3D virtual world" perspective, neither Google Earth or Second Life existed yet. It was even early days for Wikipedia, so the idea of compressing all the information that existed into a single unified source on the web was an unsolved problem.  

In the end, it was a wonderful flameout.  The project failed to raise a 2nd round (no surprise in hindsight) and while we had a complete project, OneCosmos was unable to pay the final $2.7M they owed OVEN.  Only now, a decade later, do I have the pespective to see it with the clarity it deserves rather than as the disasterous end-point it reached.  

As I said, most of the people involved have gone on to wonderful things.  As for Joe, he returned to Salt Lake City where he had grown up, and started again from scratch.  By then, rumors began circulating that he was broke, having invested everything into the project. He started again as ManyOne Networks,  linking up with Larry Sanger amongst others (known for having worked on early Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales).  This project then became known as the Digital Universe Foundation.  A few years ago I lost touch with him, but I often wonder what he's doing.

I didn't expect this to go so long, but the story was worth telling.  And what began and an ode to the Futuristic wonders of the Space Age, took a detour to the story I actually needed to tell.  I guess the point is the future rests on the shoulders of people like Joe.  Others may laugh behind their backs, call them crazy and say  their "I told you so" when they fail.   But these same people also secretly wonder if folks like Joe are both brilliant and correct.  Often they follow them.  They envy them, for the ability to believe and bravery  to follow through, despite the risks.  And most of all,  regardless of how things end, they often owe their greatest inspiration and finest stories to them. I know I do.

So Joe, wherever you are, thanks.  Here's to the future.

R

 

 

Comments

[ann greenberg]

Great story and well told, Reuben!

I've been thinking about the 1939 World's Fair. Most people don't know that it was the marketing plan for a world dependent upon gasoline - urban planning on a massive scale. Frank Lloyd Wright, father of the organic architects, had a competing vision - called Broadacre City that was the antithesis of the Urbane vision of a city on the hill with urban sprawl. Broadacre City was more dispersed and in harmony with the landscape - where every family would be given an acre of land by the US government.

I wonder what our world would have been like if Broadacre City, wasn't relegated to a quarter-page entry in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadacre_City -- but had been fully embraced by those in power in the last century (it was presented to Roosevelt, I believe,) instead of following seductive Bill Geddes & Shell Oil into a streamlined but austere future. The difference, indeed, dreamers make - the difference indeed!

[Reuben Schrire Steiger]

OK Ann Greenberg. You just won the prestigious "COMMENT of the DAY" Award!!!!! on VTF.

Today's prize is an intro to Douglas Gayeton (trust me, this may seem like a silly thing, but it's not.)

I'm making the introduction in the public sphere because you both deserve recognition. Everyone, please check out Douglas' Project, "The Lexicon of Sustainability". www.lexiconofsustainability.com

Words really do have the ability to change our lives and Douglas is doing something about it, something passionate, heartfelt, profound, selfless and significant. Here's a gorgeous piece he sent last night about Modern Foraging http://vimeo.com/31169974

He can be reached at douglas AT gayeton dot com - please drop emails to offer help with the Lexicon Project.

Ann, I'll send email intro under separate cover, but consider yourself introduced. He's a real fellow traveler and story teller.

[Jane Ancel]

Reuben, major flashback. I have to second your story. I agree with you, but having been caught up in the excitement of that particular moment in time, I think we failed (or at least I failed) to see that Joe had crossed a tipping point into some kind of narcissistic dream world. Jobs had a vision and was crazy and driven enough to see it through. Joe was maybe too far ahead of his time and not focused enough to drive the ship. Let's chatter offline. JA

[Reuben Schrire Steiger]

Jane - I agree and disagree. Without him, the work, which was amazing despite never having been released, would never have been done. His vision inspired belief from the VC's, excitement of his team and all around him. In many ways, he was a lot like the market in a bubble. The whole things is amazing and works until it people stop believing. Then it bursts. At the same time, innovation occurs that never would in the ordinary course of events.

It reminds me of a story (it's a joke, but I can't remember well enough to make it funny).

A scruffy guy is standing on the sidewalk, holding a cup. Someone puts change in it. He's a bum. Suddenly he starts to sing. Another person puts change in the cup. Now he's an artist.

Context is everything.

[Jao]

Joe's project is feasible now, and very much attractive, i think. idk if other companies or websites have made something similar like it, but i think it'll really be a hit if you can make a working website like what you just described right now. it would be an amazing web site, especially if that was integrated into the new technology of touchable holograms.

imagining it is mind blowing.

just something to think about.

[Reuben Schrire Steiger]

Jao - I agree that it would be amazing. Whether or not it's feasible I'm not sure, though with sufficient time and money, anything can be done.

But you're right, all the component pieces already exist to make this work very nicely. The trick now, as it was then, would be to do it in a broadly available way. Back then, the issue was both the limits of the browser and the lack of broadband. Now, both are largely solved (NOTE, Second Life, which was started roughly the same time OneCosmos ended, did what they did by creating a custom viewer which limits the audience size). Now, you'd probably use a plugin like www.unity3d.com - still would be a large development project, but what could be more fun.

Final and most important question would be how to allow users to create their own content. Some sort of system would need to exist that allowed for Google Earth/Sketchup style layering - if for no other reason that to delineate between scientifically accurate data and conjecture.

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[Garret Moore]

It was a noble attempt well worth the effort, but ahead of it's time. No fertile cultural soil to germinate such an intelligent viable concept. You had to be there. I was. Worth trying twice.