Techy Feely

By BOB SIPCHEN

Sept. 26, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SAN JOSE —

We’re still at Burbank Airport on a recent Friday night when my 9-year-old son, Robert, reveals himself as a true child of the Info Age.

“Dad,” he says, “when we get on the plane, can I use your laptop?”

“Why?”

“I want to get on the Internet.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“Doesn’t it have AOL?”

I figure his question, technologically sophisticated in one way, also reflects a fundamental ignorance.

“Son,” I say, “you need some sort of communications connection to hook up with the Internet.”

In fact, though, the question underscores the sense of technological entitlement today’s youth take as a birthright:

“Doesn’t the plane have phones, Dad?”

That exchange erases any doubts about our plan to focus this weekend trip on just one place: San Jose’s new Tech Museum of Innovation.

San Jose’s civic center greets us with corporate logos--Adobe, Netcom--atop a glass and steel sky-scape that blossomed when the microchip spurred this somnolent town into the Silicon Valley’s de facto capital. Now it’s the perfect place to explore the brazen new world of technology.

For our first night at the Fairmont Hotel, we opt for the “Tech Package”--$109, including two tickets to the museum--then book our second night at the regular $99 weekend rate (since Tech admission is $8 for adults and $6 for kids, the special saved us a mighty $4).

We’ve picked the Fairmont, business-oriented but semi-posh, because of its location right on the city’s Plaza de Cesar Chavez. Through our ninth-floor window, we stare over the hotel’s pool and across Market Street to the Tech’s beguiling orangish and blue facade. For dinner we pick Original Joe’s, on the southeast side of the plaza. The place is packed even though it’s pushing 9 p.m., so we settle for the lunch counter.

This 44-year-old fixture reeks of authentic authenticity--and smells, pleasantly, of the steaks sputtering over a grill just feet from our faces. Tuxedo-clad waiters waltz about, calling out orders. The cooks, in their tall white hats, grudgingly oblige.

On Saturday morning an old family friend, Bob Nishimura, comes down from the East Bay, and the three of us join 40 or so others waiting for the Tech’s 10 a.m. opening. The Tech is so new (it opened last October) that some epigrams are still half-carved and half-penciled into the rock wall anchoring its exterior. One in particular captures the place and moment: “Optimism is the essential ingredient for innovation. How else can the individual welcome change over security?”

A guard has tipped us off that the hot new exhibit is AT&T;’s “Hi, It’s Me.” In fact, it’s the least satisfying part of our visit. One of the exhibit’s stated intentions is to show visitors how to control, rather than be controlled by, the information revolution. Instead, the incessant product propaganda and spooky robot voices that cajole visitors to forsake their privacy at every turn--”May I take your picture?”--give me the creeps.

Still, the three of us put our heads together for a digital photo that Robert incorporates into a rudimentary Web page. He names it “https://www.threeroberts.com” and posts it on the Tech’s Web site. (The museum itself has an extensive Web site at https://www.thetech.org.) But we can’t find it when we log onto another computer. So we sit back and watch Robert track down every Pokemon site on the Web, as displayed on a high-resolution television screen the size of a small pingpong table.

One of the Tech’s small joys is how well it puts matters into context. In the Communications Gallery we come upon a display of “antique” PCs.

“I had that computer!” Bob yelps, pointing at the Commodore 1541 with the enthusiasm of Grandpa spotting a Model T. There’s also an Atari 800 and a Kaypro II--the big-box “portable” I yearned for in the 1980s.

This nostalgia is fine with Robert. For about 20 seconds. Then he trots around a corner to the earthquake area, where, against the backdrop of a mock home interior, a raised platform trembles at pre-programmed intervals, replicating the movement of various shakers.

Working quickly, we build a structure out of foam blocks and then watch as a simulation of the 6.9 Loma Prieta quake of October 1989, which flattened parts of the Bay Area, topples our handiwork. As we wait for the next quake, a morbid rivalry develops. I feel a glint of pride when the young attendant declares that the simulation of the 6.7 Northridge quake--an uncomfortably accurate kinetic impression of what I remember from the morning of Jan. 17, 1994, is “the shakiest of all.”

Stepping off the simulator, we find the visually stunning but cacophonous Tech pulling us in several directions. A monster aquarium claims our attention. I’m fending off Robert with one hand and piloting a small, remote-controlled underwater vessel with the other when I hear a familiar voice.

Two feet away stands my Mt. Washington neighbor Laura Lee and her son Scotty, one of Robert’s pals since talking teddy bears were their techno toys of choice. In a blink they’re off. They go back and intentionally under-design buildings on a computer--too rigid, no dampening--then program in the 1906 San Francisco quake, which sends their structure shimmying like a hula dancer, scattering virtual bricks.

They create a satellite. They climb into a cutaway of a Sony DCR-VX1000 underwater craft--built of ceramic to withstand 8 tons per square inch of pressure. They stick their hands into a mechanical arm with 18 rotary joints--a “Walking Submarine Newtsuit”--and pilot a remote-controlled Mars Lander.

Meanwhile, Scotty’s dad, Byron, joins Bob and me in a cutthroat astronaut competition, in which we take turns piloting an air-powered rocket chair around a platform, trying to align light beams with targets. When I finally glance at my watch, it’s already 12:30 p.m., and we haven’t even left the basement level.

We say goodbye to the Lees and cut across the busy plaza. Back inside the hotel we rub elbows with Los Angeles Galaxy players, in town to play a soccer match against San Jose.

During the weekend, we fit in some swimming pool time and a fine Mexican meal, and Bob treats us to an IMAX double feature of “Everest” and “The Living Sea” back at the Tech (San Jose’s wraparound Hackworth IMAX theater is a lot cooler than the flat-screen IMAX in L.A.’s Exposition Park).

By and large, though, the museum monopolizes us. San Francisco’s Exploratorium is on a par with the Tech for hands-on fun, while the design of Los Angeles’ own California Science Center is more stunning--and the science exhibits are as engaging. But where the Tech stands out is in the area of applied science, that crossroads of pure research and the profit motive. Catch the spirit of entrepreneurial innovation, and the place exhilarates.

Sampling a breakthrough that is helping both sculptors and surgeons, for instance, Robert sits in a chair as a laser circles his head, charting the topography of his face in a 3-D portrait.

What’s amazing and encouraging here is how thoroughly the kids and parents, chattering in a Babel of languages, appreciate this amusement park for the mind. Some of the most engaging exhibits, in fact, are the least frenetic.

A display on silicon chips, for example, shows how they are made and charts their history, from their invention in the early ‘60s. We look through a microscope at a 4004 chip--which contains a little more than 1,000 transistors--and then the exponentially denser 8080, 286, 486 and Pentium chips. The Pentium Pro PPC662 will boast 10,000,000 transistors. As another posted aphorism puts it: “Change is the medium of opportunity.”

Still, it’s good to keep the museum’s euphoric take on technology in perspective. On our ride back to the airport, cabdriver William Weng points to the Global Positioning System on his dashboard.

“When it works, it’s great,” he says. “When it’s not working, I feel like throwing it out the window.”

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Budget for Two

Air fare, round trip,

Burbank-San Jose: $224.00

Taxis: 30.00

Hotel, 2 nights: 228.80

Dinner, Original Joe’s: 41.34

Dinner, Casa Castillo: 34.18

Malts, Johnny Rockets: 7.47

Sundaes, Double Rainbow: 9.65

Souvenirs, hat and shirt: 26.90