Volume V, Issue I, 2015
International Technological University
A WASC Accredited Graduate School
In this issue of the ITU Journal, we looked back through history and forward through time, to produce our Future-themed issue. To start off, we asked Dr. Amal Mougharbel, ITU Journal Editor-in-Chief and Business Administration Department Chair, to tell us what education might look like in 20 years: When we ask what education will look like in the next 20 years, the answer ultimately boils down to the mentality of individual professors. Some will embrace it, and try to keep up, while others will remain ‘old school.’ The physical environment of learning is sure to change. The traditional classroom is sure to remain, although e-learning may become the norm, where it is possible for students to stay at home, and engage in class through computer networks. Current online courses work on the latter model. This kind of isolated learning may work well, but it degrades interaction between students, which is key to the university experience. Whatever the environment, instructors will need to understand what is happening, and that some careers may become extinct. Knowing this will allow them to prepare young people to survive and thrive in an ever evolving world. Whatever the future of education may be, one thing we can be assured of is constant change for both students and educators. Who knows; some of us may work in careers that don’t even exist yet!
Amal Mougharbel, PhD Business Administration Department Chair ITU Journal Editor in Chief
Editor-in-Chief : Amal Mougharbel, PhD
TEAM
Editorial Board: Patricia Wiggin James Dohnert Daniel Keenan
Designers: Kathia Rubi Tiffany Crader Jinal Vichhivora Twesha Khanijow Barbara Gini
WHAT’S INSIDE 3 4 5
The Future Ain’t What It Used to Be: The Worst Technological Predictions 2015 may not be all flying cars and autofitting clothes, but what about the actual predictions of the future? Did somebody say military bases on the moon?
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Can Hoverboards Ride the Wave of the Future? Daniel Keenan investigates the world’s first functioning hoverboard.
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Smartwatches and Spike Jonze’s Her 2014 was the advent of the smartwatch, but will this innovation eventually turn us into Joaquin Phoenix from Her?
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Bringing the DeLorean Back to the Future Back to the Future’s Wes Takahashi, talks about his work on the iconic trilogy, and transforming the DeLorean from a Detroit reject into a Hollywood movie star.
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Thinking Outside The Boxtrolls The Boxtrolls co-director, Anthony Stacchi, opens up about his time working on the stop motion blockbuster, with Sir Ben Kingsley and Tracy Morgan.
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The Future of Silicon Valley
14 15
Let’s Patent a Time Machine
Copy Editor: Susie Pham
ITU Journal cannot be held liable for its content. The views expressed are those of the writers only. The Editorial Board reserves the right to edit submissions.
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Mind boggling company valuations has led many to speculate that Silicon Valley is creating a tech bubble. Dr. Hiram Willis gives us his opinion.
Recent controversies around the patent system lead James Dohnert to explore the possibility of patenting a time machine.
International Technological University is accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.
Volume V, Issue I, 2015
By Daniel Keenan
I
Late last year, Tony Hawk even demoed a limited-functioning hoverboard (see Page 5). But where are the robot gas stations? The flying cars? The ‘80s nostalgia cafes? The auto-fitting, self-drying jacket? The mobile trash can? The floating chiropractic belts? We do have re-imagined 3D technology, but there are no 3D sharks attacking us on the street to promote a movie, although perhaps this is more of a statement about how aggressive our advertising has become.
t’s 2015. Most of us now carry around a phone with more processing power than Apollo 11. Yes, in your pocket is a machine greater than the craft which completed one of mankind’s most significant journeys, and it still can’t load your Facebook profile. It’s strange to think that we now live in the future, a year upon which a past generation pondered. Science and technology have come a long way in the past few years, but many people will be disappointed that we haven’t reached the technological heights of Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future Part II movie, which had everyone dreaming of flying cars and five-second pizzas. We have a few months until Marty McFly is due to arrive, on October 10, 2015, but I think we can agree we’re a long way away from highways in the sky.
Yes, Back to the Future did not exactly get the future right, but let’s be honest, it was never supposed to. However, we have had our share of erroneous predictions about technology and science in the real world, from people who really should have known better. So from our bubble in the “futuristic”world of 2015, with Captain Hindsight in the passenger seat, prepare yourself for a journey of eyebrow-raisingand facepalming. Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads!
For all the wrong ‘predictions’ – and let’s use the word predictions very loosely, considering it is a movie- Back to the Future was surprisingly accurate in its predictions for 2015. In the last two years, Apple and Google have released smartwatches and smartglasses respectively, while Nike has even announced the launch of self-tying shoes later this year. If you’re one of the millions of people who watch television, while on your computer and using your phone, I think you will agree that multi-screening has become part of our everyday lives.
A Military Base on the Moon by 1966 The advent of nuclear missiles in the middle of the 20th century made space exploration tangible for two nations engaged in a bitter standoff, the USA and the USSR. In 1959,
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International Technological University
A WASC Accredited Graduate School
Nobody Needs a Personal Computer
a full two years before Russian cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, would even orbit the earth, the United States’ Army Ballistics Missile Agency suggested the $6 billion Project Horizon, which proposed building a lunar military base, and having it fully functional on the moon by 1966. While this does sound like the plot to a low-budget James Bond movie, it was a legitimate proposal considered by the US Army.
“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his (or her) home.” –Ken Olsen, 1977
“I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings in Europe will own them.” That second quote is actually from “I predict the Internet will The Simpsons, probably parodying Olsen’s prediction. soon go spectacularly
The idea was simple: with America in the throes of the ‘anything you can do, I can do better’ pseudo-war with the supernova and in 1996, [ it will ] This was not a prophetic moment for the USSR, a military base on the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation. catastrophically collapse.” moon should be set up, to allow We know that almost everybody in the -Robert Metcalfe, inventor of the Ethernet, 1995 for further space exploration, US has a personal computer nowadays, and to “protect potential United whether it is in the form of a tablet, States interests on the moon… smartphone, desktop or laptop, with and for military operations on the moon if required.” approximately two billion now active in the world. During the 40 years after Olsen’s quote, the world became more digital, Unsurprisingly, the sun never rose on Project Horizon. and technology became more affordable, to the point that there To consider how unfeasible this project was, you have to was little reason for any individual not to have a computer in remember that Neil Armstrong would not even set foot on the their home. moon until 1969, three years after this base was supposed to be fully operational. Personal computers really took off in the late ‘80s, but even one of the key figures behind the PC revolution, Bill Gates, Almost 50 years later, we are still no closer to having a base couldn’t fully comprehend their future. Gates once said: “We of any kind on the moon. Although former Commander of will never make a 32-bit operating system.” Windows 8 now the International Space Station, Chris Hadfield, believes that runs on a 64-bit operating system. humans will have a base on the moon by 2054. That’s nearly 100 years after Project Horizon was proposed. Slackers!
The Internet Will Fail by 1996
“I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova, and in 1996 [it will] catastrophically collapse.” - Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com and inventor of Ethernet, 1995
End of Infectious Diseases “The time has come to close the book on infectious diseases. We have basically wiped out infection in the United States.” - William Stewart, 1967
Coming from one of the inventors of the Ethernet, this was one quote which sent a 1.21 gigawatt shockwave through the technological community. Speaking at the Fifth International World Wide Web Conference in Boston, Metcalfe pointed out that the web had logged major outages over the past number of years, at companies like Netcom, AOL, and BBN, and that these failures were a precursor to a permanent outage.
Great Scott, how wrong could one man possibly be? Sure, not a lot was known about pathogens in the ‘60s, but this comment is made worse by the fact that Stewart was the Surgeon General of the United States. Yes, the head of the US health executive thought that we had fully conquered tuberculosis, Ebola, all strains of influenza, STIs, and many others, as well as diseases which had yet to be discovered, like AIDS.
Metcalfe actually turned out to be correct, and we now live in a world without internet. Maybe not, but Metcalfe could not have been more incorrect. There was no catastrophic collapse, not even a falter: only continuous growth and usage over the next year.
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How do you like them Apples?
It’s fair to say that everyone on this list has had to eat their words, but Metcalfe is probably the only person who physically ate them. During a speech at the 1997 conference, Metcalfe succumbed to pressure from the crowd, took his now infamous speech, put it in a blender, and ate the mushy results.
Apple’s Imminent Failure “I’d shut Apple down and give the money back to the shareholders.” -Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell, 1997 “Apple is already dead.” -Nathan Myhrvold, former CTO of Microsoft, 1997
The Millennium Bug is the End of the World
“Next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput.” -Sir Alan Sugar, 2005.
This was one bug that William Stewart had every right to scoff at. The idea of the Y2K bugwas that when the calendar changed from ’99 to ’00, computers would interpret that as 1900, instead of 2000, which would result in a catastrophic ripple effect. This was a serious enough problem for the world to spend $300 billion on fixing the bug, but the predictions that it would send the world back to the dark ages, causing looting, riots, and wars, was way off.
“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.” - Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, 2007 Along with revolutionizing the technology industry, one of Apple’s great successes has been to making a lot of smart men look very stupid. It’s shocking how many people have prophesized that that Apple would make like a banana, and get out of here.
Despite the huge investment in fixing the glitch, people became unhinged at the idea of Y2K. A survey of 14,000 people conducted by the Gartner Group found that, in 1999, more than 50 percent of those surveyed planned to take six weeks’ worth of cash out of their bank accounts a week before January 1; 65 percent planned to modify their stock investments; 17 percent planned to top off their car with gas, and 60 percent would top off their home heating oil, on December 31. Governments told people to store enough food and water for at least a long weekend, and supply themselves with batteries, radios, and flashlights. One of the biggest concerns was that the stock market would collapse, based on Y2K hysteria alone, but we’d have to wait until 2008 to see that.
Yet, Apple has still not rotted. In 2014, it stood as the 15th largest company in the world, with a seemingly infinite series of successful product launches. It is also one of the world’s most recognizable brands, with unparalleled customer loyalty. But they really should have just returned the money to the shareholders in 1997, right?
What About 2045? “My prediction for those in 2045 unfortunately paints a picture of people who continue to be motivated by clips of cats, and pictures of what they are eating.” -Wes Takahashi, Animation Supervisor from the Back to the Future trilogy, and ITU Digital Arts Department Chair. Check out our interview with Wes about his work on Back to the Future on Page 8.
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International Technological University
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Can Hoverboards Ride the Wave By Daniel Keenan of the Future? E
arly last year, the world swooned watching Tony Hawk take a hoverboard around a skate park. This proved to be a false dawn for Back to the Future-style hoverboards though, as the video was a hoax. Another video, showing a real and functioning hoverboard, was cause for hope, but this one required a superconductor run in subarctic temperatures. Not exactly practical.
This is no hoax. This Board can fly.
stable static equilibrium between two magnets is impossible. Hendo use what is known as Magnetic Field Architecture (MFA) to focus the field more efficiently, and allow for a more stabilized ride. The video shows Hawk taking the board up and down a customized half pipe, with the hoverboard squealing underneath him. Considering that the world’s premier skateboarder struggled to control it, it’s clear that the technology is still in its infancy.
“Hendo are designing how magnetic fields should be created, to make something extraordinary,” says Dr. Farhoodfar, who believes that the most exciting part of the invention is that it doesn’t use a superconductor. “Superconductors only work in very cold temperature, so it is not possible to do experiments in regular weather. Hendo are using some original, physical properties like “Lenz’s Law” and other laws of physics, which are created with this MFA.”
Well, the future finally arrived in November of last year. Los Gatos based laboratory, Arx Pax, debuted the Hendo Hoverboard with a video, once again starring Tony Hawk. But this was no hoax. This board can fly. The board works using its four disc-shaped hover engines, which induce an opposing magnetic field that provides lift, levitating the board off the ground. ITU Professor of Electrical Engineering, and PhD in Solid States Physics and Material Sciences, Dr. Avid Farhoodfar, explains the science behind all this: “These are not just magnets, they are electromagnets, which are controlled by both an electrical and magnetic field, with battery cells. When you change the electrical field, it creates a magnetic field, and when you change the magnetic field, it creates an electrical field. So if you change one field, you see something else happen in the other field.” And so the board begins to hover.
MFA technology, it seems, has limitless potential. While implementation in personal and aeronautical vehicles is a real possibility, its immediate future lies in trains. Trains already need a specialized surface to run on, and since levitation is friction free, it allows trains to travel faster. Maglev trains currently use magnetic levitation with superconductors, however MFA is more energy efficient and cheaper; Arx Pax estimate it would cost $10,000 per meter of MFA train track, compared to the hundreds of thousands for existing maglev systems.
The hoverboard currently has limited functionality- to levitate, it needs a specialized metal surface. Hendo themselves regard the hoverboard as a “first-step product” which “will change the way we view transportation.” Another current problem with the hoverboard stems from Earnshaw’s Theorem, that a
Whether or not we’ll be fleeing hoodlums on a hoverboard in the near future is debatable, but it looks like MFA is about to revolutionize the future of transport technology.
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Volume V, Issue I, 2015
Smartwatches and Spike Jonze’s Her “Have you seen that new Spike Jonze movie, Her,” said every person I spoke to last year. My answer, of course, was something to the effect of, “No, I hear good things though.” Avid indie movie watchers would then regale me with a brief synopsis of a movie about a guy who falls in love with his computer’s operating system. Their general summary of the plot interested me enough to finally watch the movie. True to reviews, it was a great film full of heart, technology, and high-waisted pants. Yet, one thing about the film truly peaked my interest: the idea of invisible technology. Just the phrase sounds great, but what does invisible technology mean?
By James Dohnert
“It is very hard to have a ‘killer’ app that every one likes in a short time. Developers need to start developing now so that, over time, they will come up with popular wearable apps,” says Professor Nguyen. “Even if more successful smart devices follow smartwatches later on, the experience gained in the first phase of smartwatch apps will be valuable for future devices.” Professor Nguyen already sees some advantages and limitations in smartwatches, which he believes developers need to considerwhen creating apps for the platform. He recommends that developers consider the smaller size, battery capacity, and health monitoring abilities of the smartwatch when preparing to build apps. Professor Nguyen even sees potential for kids to utilize smartwatches, in the absence of owning an actual cell phone.
Invisible technology entailspeople communicating with their digital devices as if they’re talking with a regular person. In the film, people use tiny earpieces, to communicate with their digital systems. While we’re not there yet, we do have wearable technology in our present day. Smartwatches, for example, are becoming mainstream.
“I feel more comfortable giving a smartwatch to my 8-year old son to wear, than giving him a cell phone,” adds Professor Nguyen. He projectsthat apps whichfocus on productivity, health, social networking, medical management, and outdoor activities, will have the most potential for early success. However, he has one big caveat for any potential smartwatch application: nobody is going to talk to their watches like Her anytime soon.
Samsung and Apple are now offering watches that can track your health, schedule meetings, play music, and as a added bonus tell time. As major companies start building these devices, app developers can now differentiate their software to accommodate a whole new world of mobile communications. The smartwatch offers companies the chance to build unique apps that give consumers new ways to interact with their digital ecosystem of choice, in a Her-esque way. However, it’s still early days, and the exact value of having a smartwatch has yet to befully realized. According to ITU Computer Science professor, Tony Nguyen, the emphasis is now on app developers to discover where the smartwatch industry can go.
“For now, it does not make sense for us to talk to our smartwatches yet, but it could be different in 5 years,” says Professor Nguyen.
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International Technological University
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Bringing the DeLorean BACK TO THE FUTURE Back to the Future’s Wes Takahashi, talks about his work on the iconic trilogy, and transforming the DeLorean from a Detroit reject into a Hollywood movie star. By Daniel Keenan Whether or not you’ve heard his name before, you’re almost guaranteed to know Wes Takahashi’s work. As well as his work as animator and animation supervisor in the Back to the Future trilogy, he has worked on the special effectsfor Indiana Jones, The Mask, Top Gun, and many others.
ars are a whole lot more than four wheels and an engine, they’re as complex and multifaceted as human beings. They have bodies, names, moods, and personalities. Some are loved, desired and mourned. Some cars are even movie stars. Who is the star of the James Bond movies? The Aston Martin. David Hasselhoff was always outshined by Knight Rider. Batman was just The Bat Mobile’s sidekick. Until 1985, the DeLorean was a car with two silly doors, and no personality. Then Back to the Future came along, and this car became a timeless moviestar.
On the Back to the Future set, his responsibility was to transform the DeLorean from a car condemned to ‘80s obscurity, into a tricked out TARDIS. “There was nothing in the original DeLorean footage other than a dressed up car with nothing happening,” says Takahashi. “It was a long process with me and another art director, trying to design effects that i -Wes Tak ah as h would satisfy the director, Bob Zemeckis. We were given the usual instructions, to ‘come up with something no one has ever seen before.’”
e th in g m o s d te n a w is Robert Zemek n g o n th e ti it s l a th r e d n a a k in to a N e a t th e y a w a g in p ip h ,c h o o d o f th e c a r h im . f o t n o r f in e f a b r ic o f ti m
Before the blockbuster trilogy, the DeLorean was just a symbol of the decline of the American automotive industry, which, at the time, favored style over substance. Like an out of work actress smoking her good looks away, the DeLorean was going nowhere fast. Enter Wes Takahashi and Robert Zemeckis to give the car its big break.
As vague as these instructions were, Zemeckis did elaborate on how he wanted to transform this Detroit wannabe into a
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DeLorean is the defining image that figuratively, and literally, drives the plot of the movie, and Takahashi’s contributiondid not end with creating the time slice. “The other task that I was given was to animate the electricity, described in the script as ‘the biggest bolt of lightning in cinematic history,’ which was to hit the Hill Valley Clock Tower. This also included all the subsequent electrical current as it passes through all the cables on its way to the DeLorean.”
Hollywood superstar. Takahashi explains how the director wanted “it to be extremely violent, something akin to a Neanderthal sitting on the hood of the car, chipping away at the fabric of time in front of him.” Zemeckis would get his time-tearing terror, and then some. Takahashi created the explosion effect that the DeLorean would disappears into when traveling through time. This effect would become known as the ‘time slice.’
The amount of work that went into the creation of these effects cannot be underestimated.Takahashi recalls the difficulties in developing these effects: “It was all done with many separate animated effects painstakingly done by hand with the tools at the time. Most of the time slice effects were done with airbrush on paper, the electricity was pen and ink.”
But he didn’t stop there. Takahashi worked on “everything from lighting up the DeLorean like it had blue neon-emitting comets around it, complete with contrails that would emanate from the blue neon, and strike an invisible plane with its own animated explosion, ripping open another effect. The time slice had to be affected by the speed of the car, and smoke was constantly blowing off of the ‘time slice’ with each explosion.”
The end of the decade brought a whole new level of technology, perhaps more akin to what ITU Digital Arts students learn today: “Computers came of age in my mind when I was attending Jurassic Park dailies in the early ‘90s, and I realized that there was no way that traditional animated effects could come close to creating the living, breathing, bleeding creatures, that I was witnessing. That’s when I put my animation cameras, lights, and motion control units with the mothballs.”
The time jumps are among the most iconic moments of the movie, a testament to Takahashi’s cinematic expertise. The pageantry around the time jumps, from the bright lights to the mini explosions, celebrated by fans and industry professionals alike.“I can’t tell you how many times I have seen clips of my work being used in compilation reels for the Academy Awards, and AFI [American Film Institute] events,” says Takahashi.
2015 is a landmark year for Back to the Future. It is the year to which Marty McFly and Doc Brown travel to in the second installment; it is also the first film’s 30th anniversary. The trilogy still stands among the most beloved movies ever made. Takahashi reminisces about some of his time on set, outside of the effects studio. He fondly remembers working with a “fresh faced” Michael J. Fox, who was being “borrowed from his Family Ties obligation, which was shooting at the same time.” The film would turn out to be a much bigger gig. Highlighting how the Back to the Future legacy never fades, Takahashi recalls working with a more steely-faced Michael J. Fox: “I then got to work with him again ten years later, when I headed visual effects for Peter Jackson’s film, The Frighteners. There was one scene where John Astin’s character, ‘The Judge’ is cut in half by the Grim Reaper. In one take, Michael J. Fox, instead of yelling in horror ‘Judge!’ mistakenly screamed ‘Doc!’”
The
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A WASC Accredited Graduate School
THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOXTROLLS:
By James Dohnert
A Conversation With Co-Director Anthony Stacchi
S
top motion animation has come back in a big way in recent years. Thanks to companies like Laika Studios, the classic animation style has once again been showcased on movie screens across the world. Stop motion has ingrained itself in popular culture with releases like Nightmare Before Christmas, Coralline, James and the Giant Peach, and, most recently, The Boxtrolls. The styling of stop motion is more in line with old school cinema like King Kong and Jason and the Argonauts. These films serve as a drastic departure from digital spectacles like Transformers and Transformers 2. And Transformers 3… And Transformers 4.… The chance to meet co-director of The Boxtrolls, Anthony Stacchi, came when he spoke at ITU’s guest lecture series, ITU Presents. As I walk up to introduce myself, I witness a sea of students gathered in front of the filmmaker, admiring a mannequin of his prized Boxtrolls character, Trout. Stacchi shares with the captivated crowd his reason for loving the stop motion medium: its practical nature.
“Everyone knows that old adage: the slimmer the vessel, the more it can carry. Well, the better the story, the more opportunity you have for conflict and character to come out. But [as the writer] you’re a bad judge of how simple it needs to be,”
“At the end of the day, we work in a world where everything is so ephemeral, whether it’s online, or on a green screen,” says Stacchi. “So to see peoples’ attitude to something that they can actually touch – when you show them a puppet they want to reach out and grab it.” With Trout now put away, the crowd begins to disperse, and I am finally able to make my introduction. We scurry off to an empty classroom to talk, and against my expectations, we don’t start talking about stop motion at all. Instead, we begin by discussing The Boxtrolls narrative. The Boxtrolls is based on the children’s book, Here Be Monsters. The book features a variety of characters and ideas, so Stacchi’s
Anthony Stacchi
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first job on the film was to breakdown a story which could be manageable for the film’s 100-minute runtime. The team at Laika worked to simplify the book numerous times, cutting side plots, shaving character roles, and then repeating the process until it became more fitting. He recounts how stop motion gave the team ample time to try things out, and collaborate.
different take on the character than anyone expected. “Sir Ben came in with a really strong idea of how he thought Snatcher would talk. It was along the lines of what we talked about, but it was further then where we considered going,” continues Stacchi. “The way he elongated verbs, and vowels, and stuff. Luckily, he was so intimidating that I didn’t tell him what to do. It did take me a while, but it grew on me.”
“Everyone knows that old adage: the slimmer the vessel, the more it can carry. Well, the better the story, the more opportunity you have for conflict and character to come out. But [as the writer], you’re a bad judge of how simple it needs to be. So the good thing about animation is you get to make the movie before you have to make the movie. You make that story real, and then you present it to everybody.”
For Stacchi, just working with Kingsley was a career highlight, and his story hilariously juxtaposes with another top tier actor, Tracy Morgan. When one of the actors remarked that the cast needed more “crazy,” they had Tracy Morgan read for the part of Mr. Gristle. When he started to loudly read Mr. Gritle’s stage directions, as well as his lines, everyone loved it, and they added that to his character. As we start to wrap up the interview, he shares how his life took him from digging ditches in Boston, to finding his passion in the animation industry. He credits a high school teacher for instilling him with a passion for storytelling and giving him the courage to pursue moviemaking. Stacchi firmly believes that without that teacher’s motivation, he’d still be working construction in Massachusetts.
Once the story was broken, came preparing the actors. Stacchi says that he worked with the cast to create a theatrical acting experience, where voice actors didn’t have the unlimited takes of modern CG films. Working with actors like Sir Ben Kingsley, Nick Frost, Tracy Morgan, and Richard Ayoade, Stacchi established a set where collaboration and rehearsal was key.
“[Animation] is the only thing I can do. Prior to being an animator, I was a laborer. Then I went to school to become an animator. So, there was not a lot of wiggle room for me,” says Stacchi.
“Sometimes [actors] come in and go, ‘What do you want?’ Other times they come in with an idea in their head and it’s not what you want. You just have to be really careful not to snuff out that enthusiasm,” adds Stacchi. “I mean if it’s really wrong, it’s really wrong, but if the person is comfortable doing it, and the person really likes doing it, then you have to take that into account.”
As we say our goodbyes, and I give Stacchi time to prep for his presentation, I realize his personal story strikes the biggest chord with me. His all or nothing approach to animation is a reminder that passion for a project is perhaps the most important ingredient to finding success. The minutia of stop motion animation requires a lot of hard work, and if you don’t love doing the work, you’ll probably hate it.
Our conversation meanders from talking about Boxtrolls, to his early years training carrier pigeons, to what it was like working with Oscar winner, Sir Ben Kingsley. Having never taken on an animated film, the idea of Kingsley accepting the role seemed far-fetched. However, as luck would have it, Kingsley was smitten with the character of Snatcher. Getting Kingsley was quite a coup, but the iconic actor came in with a
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International Technological University
A WASC Accredited Graduate School
by Daniel Keenan
T
After rejecting Facebook’s offer, Snapchat began to use its video and photo sharing platform to advertise. Their first advertisement, a customized trailer of the film Ouija, was viewed by millions, and deemed a success. It’s clear that Snapchat now has a strong revenue stream. And if hacked Sony emails a good point of reference, Snapchat also wants to expand into everything from shopping, to wearables computers, to music sharing. But still, $10 billion?
he Hill Valley of 2015 hasn’t exactly come to fruition. However, as the inhabitants of another valley strive to make some of those predictions come true (see Hoverboards, on page 6), the future of Silicon Valley has been brought into question.
Silicon Valley is the world’s epicenter for innovation, a place where technology and entrepreneurship have blended to create a unique cluster of affluence, youth and eccentricity. Huge innovation generates large-scale investment, which creates massive growth, which creates enormous inflation, which has led many commentators to suggest that Silicon Valley is creating a tech bubble akin to the 2000 dot-com bubble. Companies in the Valley are bought and sold regularly for mind-boggling amounts of money, even when said companies have yet to generate a single dollar in revenue. Apps like WhatsApp (bought by Facebook for $19 billion in 2014) and Snapchat are valued at nosebleed levels because of their potential, not because of their monetary success. Facebook offered to buy Snapchat for $3 billion in mid-2014. Despite no revenue streams to speak of, Snapchat has tens of millions of users, so there must be potential to make money.Snapchat rejected the offer and, at the time of going to print, is valued at $10 billion.
While money sometimes seems like a sentient being in itself, living in a fragile and ever-changing ecosystem, fact is that people determineeconomic fluctuation. It is human error, foresight, and policy that move those lines on economic graphs. The majority of investment in new Silicon Valley companies come from venture capitalists (VCs), so whether or not a bubble forms depends heavily on how on how wisely they invest.
Dr. Hiram Willis, a PhD in Finance and Professor of Accounting at ITU, explains where these extraordinary valuations come from: “A lot of valuation attempts err in their process, and they generally take into account only the value of physical assets, when intangibles can be just as valuable. Acquirers of companies generally have their own valuation process and algorithms that justify the final acquisition price. In the case of WhatsApp & Snapchat, the valuation is not just based on these companies’ financials, but rather how the acquiring companies will use the acquisition’s assets to generate value.”
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invest in new technologies. Our existance strongly depends on the maintenance and development of it. But why should entrepreneurs continue to choose Silicon Valley?
So what exactly differentiates Silicon Valley’s seemingly endless growth, from the astronomical failure of the 2000 dotcom bubble? The answer to this essentially boils down to the level of risk these VCs are taking. Risk is not an easy metric to measure though. Some sectors of Wall Street – and even some VCs – believe that Silicon Valley is taking too many risks, and think the end is nigh. Others say the investments are more calculated.
Many cite the high-energy culture, incubators, and the openness with which startups are met as a big attraction. However, a recent report by Atomico found that the number of billion-dollar companies formed outside Silicon Valley is growing at a faster rate than the number formed within it. Entrepreneurs are coming to the Valley to learn its ways, then returning to their respective countries, and creating their own startup ecosystems.
According to Dr. Willis: “The venture capital community has evolved over the last forty years. At each cycle, they have learned more about new venture investing. I don’t think that there are any experts, but rather, fast learners. The 2000 dot-com bubble came at the end of the 1990’s growth in venture capital investing. There was an abundance of investment capital at the time, along with investment partnerships that populated Silicon Valley. Companies were assigned valuation that went way beyond reason.”
ley’s l a V n o c i l i S tiates n e r e f f i d y l of the e r u l i a f l “What exact a c ronomi t s a e h t el of v o e t l e h t s i growth r answe e h T ? e l b b u ng.” i k dot-com b a t e r a s C risk that V
Dr. Willis maintains his belief in the longevity of Silicon Valley, citing the cluster of businesses tucked between the Californian mountains and the San Francisco Bay, as a huge draw for budding entrepreneurs: “Sure, Silicon Valley must learn how to compete with other US regions, but I feel we are rather uniquely blessed with great universities, an Asian-Pacific location, VC infrastructure, and networks of investors that seek to support entrepreneurs looking to start new businesses.”
Dr. Willis recalls those dark days and compares it to the current state of Silicon Valley: “The dot-com bubble came at the end of a tremendous hubris in Venture Capital (VC), and angel investing in startups that had little chance of major stock market success. Many companies would have made great small to medium sized businesses, but were spoiled with excess capital.”
Silicon Valley’s tumultuouseconomy will probably never normalize, but Dr. Willis maintains that Silicon Valley’s unpredictability is what it makes it great: “I do not see Silicon Valley getting back to the ‘go-go’ 1990s for at least another 5 to 7 years. We will go through similar periods of growth and bust in the future. Will we ever be stable? I hope not.”
“However, 2014 feels different. The economy is still struggling to recover, VCs are smarter, and access to easy growth capital is still not there. While no one can predict the future, I do not see an immediate tech-bubble,” continues Dr. Willis. “Generally, the precursors to market bubbles include rising perception of too much investment risk, too many cheap investment opportunities, and investors entering the market with little knowledge of the target asset, but seeking to make a ‘killing.’” The Valley’s saving grace is its pursuit of innovation. While the current level of affluence is probably unsustainable, technology is not a fad. Whether we are in economic prosperity or recession, we are always going to pursue and
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International Technological University
A WASC Accredited Graduate School
The Time Machine Patent Paradox By James Dohnert
T
place of paid content was upheld in a court of law a company called Ultramercial successfully upheld its online advertising patent in a federal court a little over a year ago. The firm effectively argued that its patent was not “abstract” – a fancy way of saying that something is too general to be patentable. With rulings like the Ultramercial one, it’s easy to believe that the US patent system is fundamentally flawed. Yet, it still serves as a primary cog in the American business landscape. Surely, there must be a reason why the ‘flawed’ system has survived so long? Surely, there must be merits in the system? Luckily, by performing a thought experiment for an imaginary invention that will take us through the process piece-by-piece. Despite early trepidation, we’ll use the time machine as our patentable McGuffin.
he patent system has taken over the news cycle in recent years. What used to be an afterthought of American society has come to the forefront, in a wave of litigious companies and patent trolls (companies whose only viable income comes from money made through patent royalties). Take, for example, the Google acquisition of Motorola Mobility. In 2011, search giant Google acquired Motorola Mobility for upwards of $12.5 billion. Google’s large-scale purchase was reportedly made to increase its patent holdings, and build a buffer against potentially litigiouspatent holding companies. The landmark acquisition was a milestone in the never-ending patent wars that have devoured Silicon Valley over the years. It showed that tech companies were paying attention to the patent landscape, and put the purchase of patents at the forefront of modern society. It also served as reminder that the US patent system would be a major part of the biz-tech conversation moving forward.
When the idea of patenting an imaginary time machine was brought up to ITU MBA Professor Tom Tafolla, he had some early concerns. He worried that a time machine was too abstract to offer a complete understanding of the patent system. “I believe it would be more appealing if you came up with a more believable invention or one that is more likely to appear in the near future,” said Tafolla when we first met for the story. Fortunately, we quickly discovered that the time machine might be more substantial than we thought.
Common rhetoric on the issue comes back to a singular argument: the patent system is and cannot keep up with innovation in the modern technology age. Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have consistently argued that an underfunded US Patent Office has led to a string of bad patents being granted to inventors of unoriginal inventions. Those like the EFF, argue that the rapid advancement of industries like software development requires a reshuffle of the current system and a new paradigm for the way patents are issued. The argument isn’t without merit. Bad patents have been given out in the past and will likely continue to be handed out as general as online multiplayer video games, and streaming audio over the Internet have been granted patents. Just two years ago, a patent on serving ads on the web in
In 2006, Marlin B. Pohlman of Tulsa, Oklahoma – which is, of course, the epicenter of the time machine industry – attempted to receive a patent on a “Method of Gravity Distortion and Time Placement.” His device was not his own. Pohlman’s patent used general schematics he found on an online message board. The messages detailed the curious tale of a time traveler named John Titor. Titor purported to be an American soldier from the year 2036. He claimed that in the near future, humanity would be in the apocalyptic throes of human strife and suffering. The cause? A Y2K-esque electrical calamity known as the UNIX Year
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Volume V, Issue I, 2015
argument for what’s wrong with the patent system. However, many will argue that those issues are few-and-far between. Professor Tafolla argues that, for the most part, the system works, “I’d argue that the system has enough in place to do what it does well.”
2038 Problem. Long story short, Titor had to travel back to the year 1975 and retrieve the only computer capable of saving humanity: the IBM 5100. You know that classic tale! In-depth posts detailing how he built a time machine followed Titor’s outlandish tale. Even more strange, some people on the present Internet said Titor’s time machine might actually work.
Tafolla’s opinion, and that of others, goes on to state that the occasionallegal disputes from patent warfare are a natural repercussion of any sort of system. The groups of folks that dismiss the current patent system dispute that technology, as it is, defeats the purpose of our rapidly innovative lifestyles – or something to that effect.
“The present invention relates to the use of technical displacement devices, which operate by the modification of gravitational fields. These drive systems do not depend on the emission of matter to create thrust to take advantage of time dilation, but rather create a change in the curvature of space-time, in accordance with general relativity,” reads the time machine patent. “This allows travel across topologies by warping space-time, to produce a topology change from one space like boundary to the other.”
Counterpoint! Patent litigation has been a part of the system since the beginning. To truly understand the history of the patent system, we’ll need to take our patent pending time machine to the year 1906. In the days before men flew like birds, the original brothers of flight, The Wright Brothers used the patent system to sue pilot, Glenn Curtiss, for infringing on their patented plane designs. Curtiss, while working for Alexander Graham Bell’s Aerial Experiment Association (AEA), copied the brothers’ general designs to build two plane models: The Red Wing and The White Wing. The original patent war would go on to bankrupt both the AEA and the Wrights. Orville and Wilbur Wright’s patent wars illustrate the fundamental idea that the patent system can cause damage, but is important. At the end of the day, the patent system is a viable tool to protect inventors. However, it’s far from perfect and can be used just as much as a defensive measure, as an offensive one. Professor Tafolla believes that no matter where you stand on the issue, the patent system is here to stay.
Unfortunately – or fortunately for the future of mankind – Titor’s time machine did not hold up in the patent office, because it dealt with theoretical science that was not yet viable to recreate. This leads us to the first rule of patentability, it has to be usable by others. In other words, the invention must be easy enough to understand that someone who isn’t the inventor can make it. Utility was the big misstep for Titor’s invention because, surprisingly, it passed the other basic rules of patentability. The basic concept behind Titor’s invention was “novel,” as in, it used time travel principles in a way that was previously not put together as a whole. It was also “nonobvious.” Built on top of a collection of theoretical science, the time machine was created in the mind of this selfdescribed time traveller. While Titor’s time machine is nonobvious, many people who are calling for a patent system change would argue plenty of patented inventions don’t hold up to the rule. Take for example, Apple’s iPhone. The original smartphone maker has argued in court that it owns a patent on the basic ‘rectangle with rounded corners’ smartphone designs. The alarming trend of Fortune 500 companies using iffy patents to get litigious patentsdoesn’t end there. Samsung fired their own shots at Apple with suits that used patents focused on the basic ability to play video on a mobile phone. Both cases make a viable
“In my opinion these [management of the technology and innovation processes] are closely tied to the concept of intellectual property, and this subject area should be strongly integrated with the principles of managing technology and innovation,” says Tafolla.
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ISSN: 2161-8054