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I wrote the following speech to introduce Jaron Lanier at the Symbolic Systems Program’s Distinguished Speaker event at Stanford University on May 15, 1997. The introduction was written over the course of a few days, during which I gathered my inspiration from the Internet, books and magazines that I had read, movies that I had seen, and, of course, good old Adam philosophy at the time. The event was held in the basement of the Cummings Art Building on campus.

Have you all ever wondered what happened to those little five to ten minute shorts that cinemas used to play before the feature film? Instead of a never ending stream of boring teasers or previews, we were entertained by cartoons and short dramas. Where have they gone?

In introducing the Symbolic Systems Student Society’s Distinguished Speaker for 1997, I will attempt to evoke those memories of yesteryear in sharing with you a simple story about rebirth, about yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Pebbles. And no, I’m not talking about Fred Flintstone’s daughter!

I would like everyone in the audience to close their eyes for the next 30 seconds. And, as you close your eyes, just listen to the silence around you and ask yourself the question:

If you drop a pebble into a pond, what do you get?

Ripples.

These ripples originate from a single point, but they soon expand to traverse the entire pond.

[ DROP MARBLES INTO A JAR ]

Can you hear? Ripples of sound, generated from a point, yet they cut through the expanse of air filling this auditorium, cascading through your ears and nerve endings to fashion those familiar aural sensations.

The birth of a sound … is it not unlike the birth of an industry?

Today’s Distinguished Speaker was such a pebble, a pebble that was flung deep into the pond of our collective consciousness years ago. He coined the term, “Virtual Reality” and in doing so, founded the VR industry. He helped to invent some of the fundamental VR components such as interface gloves and VR networking. In addition, he has performed pioneering work in the field of visual programming, was one of the first to propose the advent of web-based network computers, and created the first “avatar” for network communications.

Yesterday, this man, in taking the very first few steps, has begun the process of bridging of the gap between physical and virtual worlds.

Today. We continue to ride along the ineluctable ripple to the pond’s edge.

Our speaker has been called many things in the past: visionary, controversial, charismatic, arrogant, passionate, obsessive, and childlike. Today, I would like to add another description to our speaker: Renaissance Man.

In 1906, the term “Renaissance Man” was added to our society’s lexicon, describing “a person who has wide interests and is expert in several areas.” The first of such people was Leonardo da Vinci. While best known for being a great painter, da Vinci was equally gifted as a designer, scientist, futurist and thinker. Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, was a diplomat, lawyer, political philosopher, scientist, architect, and a writer to boot!

Now, fast forward a few hundred years to May 15th, 1997. Soon, you will meet another Renaissance Man: an artist, writer, composer, computer scientist, and philosopher in our Distinguished Speaker. In addition to his accomplishments in the virtual reality and computer arenas, today’s speaker is an active composer and performer of new classical music. His paintings and drawings have been displayed in exhibits around the world and Internet. And, he has written numerous essays and articles concerning the philosophy of mind and language.

Now, I’m sure that many of you audience members who are Symbolic Systems’ students, graduates, or faculty are shaking your heads right now, thinking, “Hey, this guy is the prototypical Symbolic Systems student! He embodies both the body and spirit of SSP!”

… now, I wonder …

There is a French phrase I’m particularly fond of, “La lutte, elle-même, vers le sommet suffit à remplir un coeur d’homme.” The struggle itself to the top suffices to fill a man’s heart. I’d wager to everyone today in Annenberg, had our speaker taken the infamous class Philosophy 160A: First-Order Logic, that he’d conclude, along with every SSP student who has painfully climbed that dizzying mountain of proofs and reductio, that, yes, “Logic is only the beginning of wisdom.”

Tomorrow.

In the book, “The Alchemist” by Paolo Coehlo, we read of a young boy in a fable about hidden treasures and the importance of following one’s dreams. What sort of dream or destiny, if any, is our speaker trying to fulfill? In a feature article from one of the earliest issues of WIRED magazine, he explains:

There are, say, entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley who have a fairly simple set of motivations in the sense that they want to be successful, and of course the simpler your motivations are the easier it is to achieve them. But my motivations are much more difficult for even me to understand. I feel like I’m seeking a better future; I’m trying to find a sense of a culturally and spiritually valuable mode of living and creating things for other people. Obviously I’m not allergic to success or unhappy with it, and I do expect to make some money at some point, but at this point it’s kind of hard to decide what was a success and what was failure. I think what we’ve done has permanently changed the dialog and the rhetoric around the future of media technology, and that’s not bad.

While it seems clear that our speaker has a sense that fate or destiny is leading him, it remains a mystery as to his final destination. His journey, it reminds me of flowing, of being like water. Water is one of the softest substances in the world, yet it can penetrate rock and it can fill any container. Be like water, and you might notice that things just seem to start falling into place, as if you were being propelled along the invisible stream of destiny. In taking in stride the slings of both fortune and failure, perhaps our speaker is asking us to try to be more like water ourselves: slow and steady, flexible yet strong. Being like water may lead us to the inescapable yet fortunate realization that, no matter what happens, in the end, “It’s all good!”

Microsoft asks us in their literature and television advertisements, “Where do you want to go today?” Yet they neglect to ask two, more fundamental questions: “Where were you yesterday?” and, “Where do you envision yourself tomorrow?”

In this brief short, we have taken a look at the yesterday of our Distinguished Speaker, his history. Shortly, you will see and hear him discuss his views on the symbol-free future of language in “Post Symbolic Systems”, his today. And, tomorrow you might just awaken finding yourself caught in a rebirth, a mental renaissance: Doors that were once closed may now be wide open, and ideas that once seemed far fetched may now be within grasp.

Tomorrow begins today.

Ladies and gentleman, on behalf of the Symbolic Systems Student Society, please help me in welcoming the 1997 Distinguished Speaker, Jaron Lanier!