Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology

Lanier, Jaron 271ings, and phrases can be syntactically ambiguous. (Afamous example is, “Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies likea banana.”) Rules-based translation software can attemptto include rules for determining which word or sentencemeaning is intended, while statistically based programs cantry to determine the probability that a given word or phrasein a given context has a certain meaning. Idioms or wordsthat are not in the program’s dictionary can also cause problems.(For example, Babel Fish translates “He already hadtwo strikes against him” literally, losing the nuance basedon the baseball reference.)There are a variety of translation software packages inuse today. The oldest is SYSTRAN, which was developedduring the cold war of the 1960s to translate Russian scientificand technical documents, and later has been used bythe European Union to work with documents in the union’svarious languages. Today SYSTRAN is the engine behindsuch popular Web sites from AltaVista (Babel Fish) andGoogle Language Tools. These services can translate text orwhole Web pages (with varying degrees of success).Simple handheld translation devices with phrases commonlyneeded by travelers are also available. More sophisticateddevices (see speech recognition and synthesis)that can facilitate two-way conversations are also beingdeveloped for applications such as military interrogationand civil affairs.Further ReadingBabel Fish (AltaVista). Available online. URL: http://babelfish.altavista.com/. Accessed September 25, 2007.Hutchins, W. John. “Compendium of Translation Software.” June2007. Available online. URL: http://www.hutchinsweb.me.uk/Compendium.htm. Accessed September 25, 2007.Hutchins, W. John and Harold L. Somers. Introduction to MachineTranslation. Burlington, Mass.: Academic Press, 1992.Trujillo, Arturo. Translation Engines: Techniques for Machine Translation.New York: Springer, 1999.Lanier, Jaron(1960– )AmericanComputer Scientist, InventorJaron Lanier pioneered the technology of virtual reality thatis gradually having an impact on areas as diverse as entertainment,education, and even medicine.Lanier was born on May 3, 1960, in New York City,although the family would soon move to Las Cruces, NewMexico. Lanier’s father was a cubist painter and sciencewriter and his mother a concert pianist (she died when theboy was nine years old). Living in a remote area, the precociousLanier learned to play a large variety of exotic musicalinstruments and created his own science projects.Lanier dropped out of high school, but fortunately sympatheticofficials at New Mexico State University let himtake classes there when he was only 14 years old. Laniereven received a grant from the National Science Foundationto let him pursue his research projects. Although fascinatedby computers (and their possibilities as an aid to musicand other expressive arts), Lanier had a sporadic academiccareer, taking him to Bard College, where he dropped out oftheir computer music program.However, by the mid-1980s Lanier had gotten back intocomputing by creating sound effects and music for Atarivideo games and writing a commercially successful gameof his own called Moondust. He developed a reputation as arising star in the new world of game design.Lanier then began to experiment with ways to immersethe player more fully in the game experience. Using moneyfrom game royalties, he joined with a number of experimentersand built a workshop in his house. One of thesecolleagues was Tom Zimmermann, who had designed a“data glove” that could send commands to a computer basedon hand and finger positions.As the 1980s progressed, investors became increasinglyinterested in the new technology, and Lanier was able toexpand his operation considerably, working on projects forNASA, Apple Computers, Pacific Bell, Matsushita, and othercompanies.Lanier then coined the term “virtual reality” todescribe the experience created by this emerging technology.A user wearing a special helmet has a computergeneratedscene projected such that the user appears to be“within” the world created by the software. The world isan interactive one: Using gloves and body sensors, whenthe user walks in a particular direction the world shiftsjust as it would when walking in the “real” world. Thegloves appear as the user’s “hands” in the virtual world,and objects in that world can be grasped and manipulatedmuch like real objects. In effect, the user has been transportedto a different world created by the VR software(see virtual reality).Virtual reality technology had existed in some form longbefore Lanier; it perhaps traces its roots back to the firstmechanical flight simulators built during World War II.However, existing systems such as those used by NASA andthe Air Force were extremely expensive, requiring powerfulmainframe computers. They also lacked flexibility—eachsystem was built for one particular purpose, and the technologywas not readily transferable to new applications.Lanier’s essential achievement was to use the new, inexpensivecomputer technology of the 1980s to build versatilesoftware and hardware that could be used to create an infinitevariety of virtual worlds.Unfortunately the hippylike Lanier (self-described asa “Rastafarian hobbit” because of his dreadlocks) did notmesh well with the big business world into which his initialsuccess had catapulted him. Lanier had to juggle numeroussimultaneous projects as well as becoming embroiled indisputes over his patents for VR technology. In 1992 Lanierlost control of his patents to a group of French investorswhose loans to VPL Research had not been paid, and hewas forced out of the company he had founded.During the 1990s Lanier founded several new companiesto develop various types of VR applications. Theseinclude the Sausalito, California, software companyDomain Simulations and the San Carlos, California, companyNew Leaf Systems, which specialized in medical