The Fall of the House of Voyager
Since its inception in 1984, The Voyager Company has built a solid brand in the evolving medium of electronic publishing - but this has guaranteed little. Venturing into the largely uncharted multimedia arena, Voyager has experienced repeated conflict from the top down. Last November, company chief Bob Stein, who led Voyager's efforts into CD-ROM and Web-based content stepped down following his ex-wife and cofounder Aleen Stein's departure in 1995.
Bob Stein, widely viewed as the leading creative guru of the multimedia industry, is also seen as the digital pilgrim who landed in New York, set up shop at 578 Broadway in 1993, and sparked Silicon Alley's growth. Stein said he was looking for some-one with whom he could either buy out the remaining Voyager partners or start a new venture. Stein added that Voyager has moved "to embrace the movie business," focusing on laserdisc rather than CD-ROM development.
During the decade's boom of venture-capital-funded high tech start-ups and inflated public offerings, Voyager's business has remained flat. Instead, creativity, not business savvy, has proven Voyager's prime commodity: non-mass-market CD-ROMs such as Who Built America? and Laurie Anderson's Puppet Motel were lauded as art objects, but only slightly boosted. Deflating the company even more, November's shakeup forced the layoffs of 20, shrinking the staff from last year's 100 to its present 45. Intellectual property has continued to suffer, as various Voyager offshoots have siphoned off company talent in recent months.
Voyager is owned by five partners - Aleen Stein, Bob Stein, Jonathan Turell, Bill Becker, and Verlagsgruppe Georg Hostzbrinck - each of whom retains 20 percent ownership.
Aleen Stein, who now runs Organa, a Manhattan-based multimedia firm, said, "Voyager is up for sale for the right price," but the buyer "has to be somebody who pursues the vision. The current crisis has brought things to a head in a way that will make all of us cooperate more to try to make a solution."
In the wake of the shakeup, Bill Becker's son, Peter, who had directed Voyager's Criterion Collection laserdisc, film, and video projects, was named president. Involved parties said Voyager would turn to the more lucrative film side of the business, centered on Janus Films - the laserdisc, classic movie archive, and distribution company started by Turell and Bill Becker that has long subsidized CD-ROM efforts. "The Criterion name is very valuable," one former employee said. "The big question will be whether the Voyager name has become a liability. If not, it can segue that laserdisc collection into a series of truly interactive CD-ROMs or DVDs."Peter Becker said that, given its new focus, Voyager "will continue to develop interactive media that emphasize our library of movie- and art-related content." According to Becker, Voyager will still publish CD-ROMs, laserdiscs, and Internet content while moving into digital video and Internet commerce. Whether Voyager realizes its ever elusive "vision" remains to be seen.
[original story in Wired 4.07, page 126.]
Promo Must Go
A recent wrinkle in cyber law has grown out of the dispute between America Online and Cyber Promotions (formerly Promo Enterprises), the now-infamous brainchild of Sanford Wallace. A federal judge in Philadelphia ruled late last year that Cyber Promotions does not have the right to send unsoli-cited email to AOL subscribers, and furthermore that the case is not a First Amendment test, since AOL is a private company. Two days after the ruling, Wallace filed a motion claiming that AOL was violating federal antitrust law.
While many her-alded this as a victory for AOL users (subscribers pay for time spent sifting through junk mail), a potentially sinister case law may be developing. The legal argument pivoted on the fact that AOL blocked Cyber Promotions's spams - before subscribers could view the messages. AOL's new mail program, PreferredMail, will allow users to bozo-filter for themselves and may make future arguments - and potential suits - moot.
[original story in Wired 4.01, page 52.]
Fast Back
On October 28, at Black Rock Desert in Nevada, Craig Breedlove once again became the fastest man on earth. The title, however, is unofficial, because at 675 mph the car was tipped by a crosswind, sending Breedlove veering wildly off course in a desperate bid to bring it to a stop - a feat he managed miles later, after negotiating the world's fastest and largest U-turn.Breedlove was unhurt; the car was trashed.This setback was the crowning indignity of months of bad luck. Breedlove spent six fruitless weeks at Bonneville, plagued by bad weather, parachute problems, and salt corrosion. Environmental groups blocked his permit at Black Rock for weeks; by the time he arrived, winter weather was imminent. Knowing he had little time, he broke his own rule, ran with a crosswind, and nearly paid for it with his life. But within an hour of the crash, he was joking with supporters in the local diner and plan-ning his comeback. "We'll be back here in June," he said.
[original story in Wired 4.11, page 184.]
Universal Avatars
Since we last left the divergent field of virtual worlds, some of their creators have been conspiring to make visitors' experiences more uniform. But rather than compromise the surroundings and make them less robust or eclectic, creators will instead stabilize identities. Velocity Inc., Worlds Inc., Chaco Communications, and IBM are putting their forces together to create the Universal Avatars standard, which will be developed as an extension for VRML 2.0. (A competing proposal, called Living Worlds, has been in the works as well, but both share the same goal.)
Having a universal avatar would mean that, regardless of the virtual worlds users choose to inhabit, they'd be able to maintain an invariant identity, appearance, and set of belongings and preferences across those worlds. All of this has obvious implications in the marketplace and any other virtual space. Mark Pesce, the father of VRML, explains: "In the same way that your Social Security number acts as an absolute reference point in so many parts of your physical life, these avatar standards will create a way to establish that reference point in the virtual world."
[original story in Wired 4.06, page 140.]
