Multimedia Mecca
The story of computers in California reads much like the history of industry in America. Just as the manufacturers of America’s Industrial Age gave way to a post-Industrial service-sector age, so now is the hardware-based Computer Age centered in Northern California giving way to a software-based Multimedia Age based in and around Los Angeles.
Although a 1995 UCLA study showed that Southern California had but 188 multimedia businesses compared with 198 in the Bay Area, the study’s director said that Los Angeles was catching up and would soon overtake its northern neighbor. Symbolically, that moment came Wednesday when the National Science Foundation announced that USC had won a hard-fought competition with institutions such as Columbia University and UC Berkeley to become the country’s only national engineering research center for multimedia. The award involves a modest $12.4 million, to be paid out over five years, but USC officials said it will unlock an additional $34 million in pledges from corporate partners and government sources.
Although most of us think of multimedia as CD-ROM kids’ games or as encyclopedias spiced with audio and visual displays, the NSF money will allow USC to go further, developing such commercially sought-after applications as “smart cameras” (to recognize faces for security purposes) and computer-assisted animation (to pull the levers that made “Toy Story” one of Hollywood’s top-grossing films). As USC President Steven B. Sample put it, “I see the NSF grant as a match on a little gasoline. It will start a bonfire of research and innovation.”
The contract did not simply fall onto USC. Rather, the institution worked hard to lure 47 corporate partners. USC’s ability to demonstrate a “tremendous display of interest” from the entertainment and computer industries was what cinched the deal, said Lynn Preston, the coordinator of the NSF’s engineering research program.
Mayor Richard Riordan, Councilwoman Ruth Galanter and County Supervisor Deane Dana also aggressively wooed multimedia by proposing tax breaks and other incentives. They can claim considerable credit for “Silicon Beach,” a cluster of multimedia firms that has sprouted in recent years in and about Marina del Rey, Venice and Culver City. The firms range from Digital Domain, the special-effects mill for the movie “Apollo 13,” to DreamWorks, a huge high-tech studio with 15 sound stages and 25 office buildings being built in Playa Vista.
In the initial wave of enthusiasm over multimedia, it was thought that the individual user would want to be a determining part of multimedia stories, much like story characters. But in test marketing since then, many software designers have discovered that there aren’t legions of people hungry to double-click on the mouse in order to compose alternative conclusions to “Macbeth.” Most people would rather be entertained by professionals. Fortunately for Southern California, those professionals are concentrated right here.
