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Columbia CollEgE Today CLAss NOTEs
Steve perlman ’83 enhances Communication through technology
Founder and CEO of
San Francisco-based
Rearden (rearden.com),
an incubator for companies
developing new ways
to combine art and technology,
steve Perlman ’83 has spent
his life building pioneering Internet,
entertainment, multimedia,
consumer electronics and communications
technologies and
services.
But he’s always been more
intrigued by what technology
can accomplish than in how it
works, viewing computers “just
as tools, not an end in and of
themselves.” This attitude was
apparent in his 1978 Columbia
admissions essay, which he
feels was “pretty unusual:” how
to build a system that would
understand human speech.
“I don’t know why they accepted
me but they did,” he
says with a laugh. “For some
reason or another, they thought
that would be a useful contribution
to the campus.”
Although Perlman’s major
was computing science, where
he worked most closely with
Yechiam Yemini, his professor
and informal adviser, Perlman
said that the classes he enjoyed
most were those associated
with the liberal arts.
“I really liked the Core Curriculum:
Contemporary Civilization
and Literature Humanities
[and] the subject matter in Art
and Music Humanities. I also
took several classes on the
novel and English literature
with Barnard professor Maire
Jaanus.”
It was this interest in communicating
thoughts and ideas
through various media that indirectly
led to one of Perlman’s
computer projects at Columbia.
After an article he had
written for Sundial, a campus
magazine, on the usefulness of
small computers for students
didn’t get a positive response
from the IT department, he
took his idea to the masses —
in this case, the students.
“I had a computer I designed
and a printer and terminal in
my dorm room,” Perlman says,
“and I wrote software so a
person without any technical
knowledge could do word pro-
cessing. I know that sounds
pretty mundane these days, but
in 1979 and 1980, that was a
big deal. I had students lined up
outside my dorm room to get
onto the one word processor
on campus!”
Perlman says that experience
had a huge impact on him. “In
every era, there always are peo-
ple who are stuck in existing
ways of thinking, and you need
to just find ways around them,”
he says. “My way, of course,
was to turn my dorm room into
the word processing room that
I thought the campus should
have.”
Since graduating from Colum-
bia, the 49-year-old Perlman,
who now lives in Silicon Valley
with his wife, has continued to
successfully “find ways around”
existing conditions and circumstances,
as evidenced by his
more than 100 U.S. patents,
with more than 100 pending.
B y na n c y christie
steve Perlman ’83, founder and CEO of
Rearden, OnLive and MOVA, at the company’s
San Francisco headquarters.
PHOTO: JAYMER DELAPENA
NOvEMBER/DECEMBER 2010
57
But he also has found a
great deal of satisfaction in
“developing people” — a talent
for which Perlman also credits
Columbia, where he had the
opportunity to recognize the
vast diversity of journeys there
are and how to synchronize
his efforts with others in a way
that would be mutually beneficial.
It’s a valuable skill that
has enabled him to mentor
the Rearden team of
engineers, artists and
scientists.
Cindy Ivers, senior
director of accounting
and finance for
Rearden and OnLive,
a Rearden-incubated
company, has witnessed
Perlman’s
approach in action.
When his engineers
come to Perlman with
what they consider
an insurmountable
problem, she says
he encourages them
to think “outside the
box.” “He’ll ask, ‘Did
you think about it this
way? Or how about
this way?’ He just
keeps plugging away
until he finds something
they haven’t
tested yet. He’s told
me, ‘I am not the
best engineer in the
company. I just help people get
over their issues and get them
to be the best they can be.’ ”
But while Perlman has been
successful in his endeavors
— his recently patented facial
motion capture technology,
MOVA Contour, was used in
the films The Curious Case of
Benjamin Button and The Incredible
Hulk — Perlman notes,
“You never get exactly what
you want out of the system.
There always are impediments
or things you learn along the
way. What you need to do is
learn while you are trying to
reach your goal, and then reformulate
that goal so you end
up with some good outcomes
… where something is useful
to people and people see some
benefit in it.”
For example, when he was
principal scientist of Apple
Computer, Perlman led the
team that developed the Quick-
Time technology, which “Apple
management thought … was
the dumbest idea in the world,”
says Perlman. But after Mac
developers “went crazy over it,”
in Perlman’s words, management
allowed them to ship it
as a product. “Now,” he says,
“more than 20 years later, it’s
built into every Mac, iPhone,
iPod and iPad, and every PC
running iTunes.”
One of Perlman’s goals is to
develop a platform for creating
interactive experience with the
depth and realism of movies
that average people can enjoy.
As he explains, while movies
and television shows are passive
forms of entertainment,
“We stand on the threshold of a
major cultural transition, where
… we can step into a world and
become immersed within it,
either passively, or actively as
a player. In time, perhaps not in
my lifetime, the simulation of
reality will be utterly complete.
You will see, hear, smell and feel
a completely artificially created
world around you. You’ll experience
the terror of landing at
Omaha Beach, or the joy of cradling
a newborn baby. Fantasy
will become indistinguishable
from reality and will open huge
opportunities for expression and
communication.”
How does Perlman define
career success? He says it’s
when “you set out to change
the world and make things better
in one way or another, and
have gotten reasonably close
to the mark. It’s being able to
go and move things, move the
ball just a bit further.”
Nancy Christie is a freelance
writer and author of The Gifts
of Change. A member of the
American Society of Journalists
and Authors, she lives in Ohio.