Ken Perlin

In order to understand what our lab does, it’s useful to think about visions and prototypes. We generally start with a set of visions for what might be possible in the future, given reasonable assumptions. For example, in 1990, a lab such as ours might have envisioned that something like the Web would soon come

I spend a lot of time imagining what it would be like when SmartPhones become replaced by wearables, to the point where mixed reality becomes the norm. I often look at everyday interactions through the prism of this question. For one thing, once the wearables replace the SmartPhone, I suspect I will end up spending

In 1959 the British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow gave a highly influential lecture in which he lamented the two cultures of the sciences and the humanities. He pointed out, rather accurately, that each camp had a tendency to look down on the other. while remaining ignorant of the great works on the other side

When I coined the phrase “Future Reality”, I was trying to describe a very specific set of ideas. Those ideas are not specific to this moment in history — they apply to every moment in history. I’ll explain. In 1992 (just before the Web) if you had tried to describe Google or Wikipedia, most people

The cloud-based towers, the rows of analysts, The hi-tech temples, the great Web itself, Yea all which they inherit, shall dissolve And, like this instance of a page, once faded, Leave not a rack behind. They are such stuff As dreams are made on, and their little life Is rounded with a sleep. (with apologies

If we assume that in five years (more or less) smartphones will be replaced by wearables, I think we can see from Marta’s very thoughtful post yesterday how many negative consequences there can be for face-to-face social interaction between people. Yet there is still time for us to help shape the outcome in a more

Today has been a very good day. I can’t exactly put my finger on why. I don’t think it was any one thing in particular. Perhaps it was just that today I truly let myself feel the unique energy of our lab, to focus on the larger meaning rather than on the details. What we

I have come to realize that our lab’s research isn’t really about technology. Yes, of course we invent things. We write code, we build hardware, we publish technical papers. Sometimes we file patents. But the questions our lab asks are really about people. Such as: What happens when you provide to people, in all of

The production we showed at SIGGRAPH 2018 was a new kind of thing. When you put an audience in a physical room together and provide them with a shared experience of total sensory immersion, it’s not exactly a play, and it’s not exactly a movie. For want of a better word, I’ve started calling it

Yesterday our production got off to a rocky start due to network issues. But today, thanks to amazing work by our grad students, our CAVE production at SIGGRAPH has hit its stride. Just in the last day, our shared VR story has been seen and heard by hundreds of people — thirty at a time