Theatrical and Theoretical Careers [Transcription of Video]

Nelson: I was torn between these different careers. I made my first movie in college, I cut an LP, and I wrote plays, but I couldn't leave behind these powerful intellectual questions that seethed within me -- how to relate the problem of complex abstract construction to the world. So, when I graduated from college in 1959, I was torn between these two areas. I had an interview with my father. Our terms had gotten quite unfriendly, and we rarely saw each other. He asked me if I wanted to go into show business or academia, and I gave the wrong answer, because he would have set me up in show business in Hollywood if I had given the right answer. But, no, no, no! I said I wanted to both, and we hardly ever spoke again. I saw no reason to give up these two things I cared about.

The next year, in graduate school, I took a computer course. While, before, there had been a conflict between the one point of view, which was theoretical, and the other point of view, which was theatrical, abruptly, I got stereo! It was absolutely plain that this machine was a theater machine, and it was the new proscenium of our new arts. At the same time, what did the computers deal with? The press had lied. Everybody said the dealt with numbers. This was nonsense. They dealt with arbitrary constructs. So, designing the arbitrary constructs that should be central to the media of the future was plainly the job for which I had trained 23 years. So, I realized this was my true work, and I would get that done in six months and then go make my movies. That was 35 nasty years ago. The first five was productive. As my first paper from the ACM that I have handed out shows, basically I had done all my thinking then. Unfortunately, I had the bad taste to live on and completely waste 35 years, because I lived in an entirely different software paradigm.

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