Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 9, 1991 TAG: 9104090500
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CECIL EDMONDS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Before our eyes.
Right there on public television, the oxymoron network.
It was awesome - a Star Wars demonstration of the capabilities of Virginia Tech's computers. "More computers," said Tech President James McComas during the Metro Conference, "than any other institution." State or mental.
Several weeks have gone by; still it's hard to describe. What we saw on Channel 15 that night was just a tip of the cowlick - the raygun wedding of the arts and sciences. Something never before achieved except at starving artists' sales. And, it was happening in our front yard.
We return now to Channel 15 and paraphrase but only slightly. "And now," said the extremely literate and scientifically enthusiastic computer-engineer person, "come with me into our studio to see some of the marvelous, perhaps miraculous, advances in technology."
With Buck Rogers (or, Roy at least) zeal, he hit a key and a lady with a Dolly Parton beehive filled all 21 inches of the screen. The screen itself was quivering in revelation.
Then: Zap, byte, zing. And lo - TOUCH ANY KEY TO BEHOLD - the lady was balder than Kojak.
"That's not all," said the computer engineer, gleefully. TOUCH ANY KEY TO MARVEL. Bombsight crosshairs shot horizontally, then vertically, until the bald lady formed a puzzle with square pieces.
At last viewers were bonded to Channel 15. Because here, on this night, they were seeing for the first time something on public television without a British narrator. And, it was educational.
This feat alone - I'm referring to getting people to watch public television, not to the bald lady - would have justified all 15,000 computers at Tech.
Please do not TOUCH ANY KEY TO ESCAPE. More wonders are to be touched. Channel 15's entire battery of one camera moved in on the only known piece of art that parents say their 3-year-old can't "paint as good as" - the Mona Lisa.
Are you ready for this? Ready to adjust your thinking about Tech, where until recent years the greatest art form was carving "Elmer Loves Bossy" on a milking stool?
The camera moved into Mona Lisa's smile, and then we saw it happen. The corner of her upper lip lifted. The computer engineer went out of his megamind. "We . . . we . . . we made Mona Lisa pucker."
(His words transported us to another time, another place, and a sound byte of Nat King Cole. "Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, they have named you. You're so like the lady with the mystic pucker.")
"That's not all," proclaimed the engineer, now as absorbed as da Vinci must have been. The camera dissolved from the pucker to Mona's forehead. (Puckering puts one on a first-name basis.)
TOUCH ANY KEY TO RAISE EYEBROW.
So help me, it worked. Mona Lisa raised her eyebrow. "Yes," he said, "we can make Mona Lisa pucker and raise her eyebrow." Pucker. Pucker. Raise. Raise. Zap. Zap.
Later, in a calmer time, I talked with a Roanoke businessman who is a prominent electrical engineer and a Tech graduate. He is in my age range. (In our day, almost no one substituted VPI in "how many does it take" jokes.)
I congratulated him on the achievements of his alma mater. "You mean," he said, "that you can still make out Elmer Loves Bossy?"
Then he asked that someone report that those 15,000 computers at Tech are pioneering computer technologies in fiber optics and robotics, doing valuable things in medicine, etc. He said everyone should be reminded that the capabilities go beyond taking liberties with a masterpiece lady.
He said he was sorry he hadn't heard any new "how many does it take" jokes lately. Sorrier that his school never gets credit for some of the serious advances it is making.
"Making Mona Lisa pucker and smile opens new vistas," the Roanoke businessman suggested. "With computer scanning we can turn the Blue Boy fuchsia. Or take the clothes off can-can dancers with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. All this is state-of-the-arts stuff that we can hang in the Hotel Roanoke conference center."
"But," he said, "I'm bothered by the baldheaded lady. That's more like the old Tech, the old VPI, the old VPI&SU. When almost everyone else in the world is looking for ways to grow hair, Tech is taking it off.
"Tech, VPI, Virginia Tech, VPI&SU - all are great. So you wonder why sometimes we seem paranoid.
"We wouldn't be," he said, "if everyone didn't pick on us."
\ AUTHOR NOTE: Cecil Edmonds is a Roanoke businessman and frequent contributor to the Commentary Page.
by CNB