High Tech Heroes
High Tech Heroes was a community access TV show dedicated to showcasing people
who have made a substantial technical contribution to the high-tech world.
High Tech Heroes could be seen on the community access stations
in a number of
cities nationwide.
High Tech Heroes was produced by Sherwin Gooch and shot
in the studio of
Access Los Altos.
High Tech Heroes Episode List
High Tech Heroes episodes featured the following people:
Volume 14
Phone Phreak Founder of Applied Signal Technology Dr. John Treichler
shows his seminal blue-box and discusses designing the first digital radio.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
A collection of Humorist Joel Kohn's funniest ComputerMan episodes.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
DSP Engineer and Amati Communications Founder Dr. John Cioffi discusses
his 6 Mbps ADSL modem which makes possible the concurrent
transmission of multiple movies over existing telephone twisted pair.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Steven Wm Fowkes, "Mr. Smart Drugs," discusses overcoming jet lag, and
optimizing brain function via the use of smart drugs.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Volume 13
Forest Baskett ran the lab at Stanford
University that spun off
Sun and
MIPS and Silicon Graphics. He was one of the early pioneers of reduced
instruction set microprocessor architectures. He is currently Vice-President
of Technology at Silicon Graphics, working on parallel processing computers.
He discusses the early days of the Stanford lab, and shows a video of
how SGI computer graphics helped ESPN during the America's cup.
(Guest Host: Ducky Sherwood)
Jeff Elliott is an author and consultant in the area of user interfaces.
He discusses his new book, "Why Is This Damn Thing Is So Hard To Use?"
and talks about common pitfalls in user interface design.
(Guest Host: Ducky Sherwood)
John Crawford was the principal architect for the Intel 386, 486, and
Pentium. He discusses and explains the evolution of the Intel x86 line
of microprocessors.
(Guest Host: Ducky Sherwood)
Roger O'Neill is a biochemist working in the area of carbohydrates.
He explains how carbohydrates are a branched structure, which means have a
very high physical information density, higher even than DNA. The body
uses carbohydrates as locks and keys for cell identification and messaging.
O'Neill discusses possible medical applications of carbohydrate knowledge.
(Guest Host: Ducky Sherwood)
Volume 12
Benjamin Chou of NuTek
demonstrates and discusses his Macintosh "work-alike".
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Mort Grosser has done many things, including writing a book on his experiences
as a member of the Gossamer Condor aircraft - the first
human-powered aircraft to cross the English Channel. He discusses some of
the technical details of the Gossamer Condor and his current work on
human nerve crossbar systems.
(Guest Host: Ducky Sherwood)
David Kelley is a professor at Stanford University and founder of IDEO,
one of the foremost product design firms in the world. Kelley shows some
of the products that IDEO has designed, including the original Macintosh
mouse, the Jamminator, and an electric vehicle charging station.
(Guest Host: Ducky Sherwood)
Bob Miner was the technical co-founder of Oracle, a billion-dollar per
year database company. Miner discusses the history of the company and
the challenges faced in growing from a two-person company to a multiple-
thousands-people company.
(Guest Host: Ducky Sherwood)
Volume 11
Kurt Petersen founded Lucas NovaSensor, a company that makes tiny mechanical
devices by using integrated circuit fabrication techniques. He discusses
starting the company and gives insight into the mechanics of the very small.
(Guest Host: Ducky Sherwood)
Tom Tengdin was one of the pilots of Alvin, the deep submersible
that found the Titanic. He also was the programmer for the
craft, and does electrical and programming work for the Monterey Bay
Aquarium Research Institute's deep submersible. Tengdin discusses the
constraints that operating at depth puts on the design of vehicles, and
the development of MBARI's new reserach submersible.
(Guest Host: Ducky Sherwood)
Randy Ubillos designed, prototyped, and produced Adobe Premiere,
a video editor for the Macintosh. Ubillos demonstrates the ease of
doing post-production with Premiere and an example of a finished
clip.
(Guest Host: Ducky Sherwood)
Larry Yaeger demonstrates PolyWorld, an artificial life simulation, and
software that he wrote for the Yerkes primate communications project.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Volume 10
Space advocate and CEO of Neural Engines Corporation Jim Bowery
explains Paul Kuroc's Plasmak, which is harnessed ball-lighning capable of
sustaining controlled fusion for an energy source or interplanetary rocket.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Industrial Light and Magic Alumnus, Architect, Graphics Expert, and Futurist
Bruce McDiffit tells on which technologies we should conenctrate to guarantee
ourselves a better collective future (2 parts).
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Inventor Jef Raskin discusses model airplanes and his inventing the
Macintosh computer.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Volume 9
Digital Music Engineer Dr. Lippold Haken demonstrates his
Playpus music engineering system,
tells how to get a free copy of his advanced LIME music editor,
and shows the CDC Cyber-emulating Zephyr computers which he built
to run the PLATO systems at the heart of NovaNET.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Engineering Professor Emeritus Howard W. Knoebel discuesses accidentally
discovering the spin-echo effect (which is fundamental to Magnetic Resonance
Imaging), shows the gyroscope of his design which is the heart of the inertial
navigation systems in nucelar submarines, and demonstrates a sawmill which
he designed and built from scratch.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Wally Jansen prospects for minerals by loading multi-frequency images
(taken by airplanes or sattelites) into a PC and comparing the spectral
response to a library of known responses. In this manner, he is able
to discover areas likely to hold mineral wealth. He has been very
successful with this technique. For example, he has found over one
million ounces of gold.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Video synthesizer artist Hud Nordin demonstrates his VidSynth video synthesizer
and shows videos he made with it.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Volume 8
World renowned engineer, entrepreneur, and inventor of packet switching
Paul Baran discusses technology developped in some of the companies he
has started, including Equatorial Communications, Stratacom, Telebit,
Metricom, InterFax, and Packet Technologies.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Telecommunications Engineer Jim Nichols discusses many of his projects,
including the design of AppleTalk and the Telebit MoDem.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
CEO of EurOpen Glenn Kowack discusses designing and overseeing the ongoing
implementation of the UNIX network in Eastern Europe.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Digital photography expert David Krauss discusses the golden days of the
Homebrew Computer Club, and demonstrates the PC-based QFX image processing
program on the Western Imaging "Thunderbox".
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Volume 7
Software evangelist Guy Kawasaki discusses his book, The Macintosh
Way, and demonstrates the TouchBase computerized address book.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
John Draper (aka "Cap'n Crunch") was one of the original "Phone Phreaks",
hackers who broke the telephone system's internal codes. He discusses
the early days of blue-boxes, Steve Wozniak and the Apple I, and
experiences from his recent lecture tour of the Soviet Union.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Episode 26: Todd Rundgren / David Levine
Synthesists Todd Rundgren and David Levine demonstrate their video synthesis
artworks Flowfazer and GrokGazer, and Todd Rundgren shows his new
Video-Toaster work for rock video, Change Myself.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Globe-trotting OSI Standards engineer Philip Rakity describes a
patent-pending invention embodied in Apple's MR-DOS minimal real-time
multi-processor operating system.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Volume 6
Jean-Louis Gassee, director of Cray Computer and CEO of Be Labs, discusses
the past few years, including architecting the Macintosh II coputer and
serving on Seymour Cray's board of directors.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
CEO of SystemSoft Barbara Fox demonstrates her company's best-selling
Japanese Macintosh software.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
High Energy Physics at the Stanford Linear Accelerator with Physicist Rick
Berg.
Clifford Williams demonstrates the Connect, Inc. international gateway,
electronic mail, and BBS-like communications system.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Volume 5
"Cray Dude" Gordon Garb shows and explains the making of computer animations
made with Digital Productions' Cray-1 supercomputer.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Jerry Bauer discusses several startup companies and demonstrates the Quickturn
CAE System's ability to instantaneously create testable, working hardware
from equations and/or circuit diagrams.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Rick Balocca, CEO of startup SuperSoft, demonstrates his PC diagnostic
package and discusses being a "Real Entrepreneur".
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Joe Cychosz shows and explains 40 years of technology development from his
computer museum.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Volume 4
Craig Barratt explains the Resonex Magnetic Resonance Menical
Imaging System.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Seymour R. Cray, Chairman of the Board of Cray Computer Corporation,
discusses his use of DTL in the design of the 1604 and Cray-3 and describes
in detail the architecture of the GaAs-based Cray-3
supercomputer. (3 parts)
Volume 3
Michael Kaplan demonstrates the Stardent real-time graphics supercomputer.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Gavin Miller demonstrates computer animation and rendering techniques.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Internationally renowned cybernetician Professor Heinz von Foerster discusses
the possibility of achieving cybernetic immortality via prosthetic brains.
Part 1 and
part 2.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Video Artist Magi Bollock shows a computer animation she made using Sun
MicroSystems' TAAC system.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Volume 2
Ted Brown of Telebit demonstrates the state-of-the-art Trailblazer PLUS
Modem.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Digital Signal Processing expert Paul Titchener creates a digital effect
by drawing and compiling DSP graphic symbols, then demonstrates the
resulting sound-effect by playing some Chuck Berry through it on a unique
electric guitar he
designed.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Digital Signal Processing engineer Dr. Julius O. Smith and computer musician
David Jaffe demonstrate the NeXT computer's built-in sound hardware
and software which they designed.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Space advocate Jim Bowery shows test firings of rockets built by
private industry, and discusses many reasons NASA should be segmented.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Volume 1
Microwave engineer Dr. Brian Gilchrist describes how electricity will be
generated when his soon-to-be launched satellite passes through the
Earth's magnetic field while tethered to the Space Shuttle.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Superprogrammer Mark Rustad discusses the generation of computer software.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Latter-day Mr. Wizard Simon Field
demonstrates many of his science toys.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Video Artist and Computer Engineer Hud
Nordin demonstrates his VidSynth video synthesizer.
(Host: Sherwin Gooch)
Subscribing Cities List
High Tech Heroes Schedules
6:30 PM, Thursday evenings, cable channel 3
For more information on High Tech Heroes, contact
Sherwin Gooch
Cybernetic Arts
PO Box 2066
Sunnyvale, CA 94087
(408) 248-0377
Ducky NOTE: This page is not complete.
You may reproduce this document in whole or in part without my explicit
permission provided that you do not receive money for it, you do not alter it,
and you attribute the author (Kaitlin Duck Sherwood).
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