Mark Pesce
Biography
Across a more than forty years in technology, Mark Pesce has been deeply involved in some of the major transitions points in the modern history of computing. In 1983, working with Dr. Ken Weiss, Pesce prototyped the SecurID card, the first implementation of a now common method of secure access. Pesce went on to develop firmware for the X.25 networks (a packet-switched forerunner of today’s Internet), modems for high-speed leased connections, and at Shiva Corporation developed the software for a series of wide-area networking products praised for their ease of use and reliability.
Following Shiva, Pesce struck out on his own, inspired by Ted Nelson’s Project Xanadu’s vision of a global hypermedia system, and William Gibson’s Neuromancer, with its massively connected and fully visualised ‘cyberspace’. As founder and CEO of Ono-Sendai Corporation, Pesce worked toward realising a consumer-priced networked virtual reality system, along the way inventing the ‘source orientation sensor’ for head mounted displays (US Patent 5526022A), reducing the cost of sensing an object’s orientation in space by a thousand-fold.
After collaborating with Sega on their Virtua VR consumer product, Pesce, working with visionary engineer Tony Parisi, blended real-time 3D with the then-emerging World Wide Web to create the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), the first standard for 3D media on the Web. Pesce and Parisi spearheaded both community- and standards-building processes that laid the foundations for today’s metaverse, culminating with adoption of VRML as MPEG-4 Interactive Profile (ISO/IEC 14496) in 1998.
Pesce wrote VRML: Browsing and Building Cyberspace - his first book - in 1995, followed by VRML: Flying through the Web in 1997. In 2000, Ballantine Books/Random House published The Playful World: How Technology is Transforming our Imagination. That book uses three children’s toys - the Furby, LEGO Mindstorms and Sony’s Playstation 2 - as launching points to explore how interactive devices shape a child’s imagination of the possible.
Appointed in 1997 as Visiting Professor at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television, Pesce founded the School’s program in interactive media - still going strong over a quarter of a century later. In 2003, Pesce moved to Sydney to found the program in New and Emerging Media at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS), teaching postgraduate creatives how to make the most of the transition to digital production, distribution, and promotion.
In Australia, Pesce’s work took a new direction, as he analyzed the sociological and political impacts of newly emerging knowledge-sharing and social networks, topics he explored in detail in two more books: Hyperpolitics: Power on a Connected Planet, published in 2009, and The Next Billion Seconds, published in 2011. During this time,The Australian Broadcasting Corporation featured Pesce on their long-running hit series The New Inventors. For seven years from 2005, Pesce appeared on Australian television screens every Wednesday evening, celebrating the best Australian inventions and their inventors.
During the run of The New Inventors, Pesce entered into a career as a public speaker that continues to this day, addressing audiences around the world on topics such as the future of education, finance, computing, energy, media and much else besides. A regular fixture on Australian television, he also writes a monthly column for The Register - possibly the most respected publication in IT - and another for COSMOS Magazine, the leading science publication in Australia. Pesce also helms two podcasts: The award-winning 'The Next Billion Seconds' and 'This Week in Startups Australia’. With VRML co-inventor Tony Parisi, recently released the highly-praised, award-nominated series “A Brief History of the Metaverse”.
Published by Polity Press in 2001, Pesce’s previous book, Augmented Reality: Unboxing Tech’s Next Big Thing, critiques the design and implementation of augmented reality systems, questioning whether these hypothecated devices truly serve their users - or simply stream valuable data back to their manufacturers.
Following Shiva, Pesce struck out on his own, inspired by Ted Nelson’s Project Xanadu’s vision of a global hypermedia system, and William Gibson’s Neuromancer, with its massively connected and fully visualised ‘cyberspace’. As founder and CEO of Ono-Sendai Corporation, Pesce worked toward realising a consumer-priced networked virtual reality system, along the way inventing the ‘source orientation sensor’ for head mounted displays (US Patent 5526022A), reducing the cost of sensing an object’s orientation in space by a thousand-fold.
After collaborating with Sega on their Virtua VR consumer product, Pesce, working with visionary engineer Tony Parisi, blended real-time 3D with the then-emerging World Wide Web to create the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), the first standard for 3D media on the Web. Pesce and Parisi spearheaded both community- and standards-building processes that laid the foundations for today’s metaverse, culminating with adoption of VRML as MPEG-4 Interactive Profile (ISO/IEC 14496) in 1998.
Pesce wrote VRML: Browsing and Building Cyberspace - his first book - in 1995, followed by VRML: Flying through the Web in 1997. In 2000, Ballantine Books/Random House published The Playful World: How Technology is Transforming our Imagination. That book uses three children’s toys - the Furby, LEGO Mindstorms and Sony’s Playstation 2 - as launching points to explore how interactive devices shape a child’s imagination of the possible.
Appointed in 1997 as Visiting Professor at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television, Pesce founded the School’s program in interactive media - still going strong over a quarter of a century later. In 2003, Pesce moved to Sydney to found the program in New and Emerging Media at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS), teaching postgraduate creatives how to make the most of the transition to digital production, distribution, and promotion.
In Australia, Pesce’s work took a new direction, as he analyzed the sociological and political impacts of newly emerging knowledge-sharing and social networks, topics he explored in detail in two more books: Hyperpolitics: Power on a Connected Planet, published in 2009, and The Next Billion Seconds, published in 2011. During this time,The Australian Broadcasting Corporation featured Pesce on their long-running hit series The New Inventors. For seven years from 2005, Pesce appeared on Australian television screens every Wednesday evening, celebrating the best Australian inventions and their inventors.
During the run of The New Inventors, Pesce entered into a career as a public speaker that continues to this day, addressing audiences around the world on topics such as the future of education, finance, computing, energy, media and much else besides. A regular fixture on Australian television, he also writes a monthly column for The Register - possibly the most respected publication in IT - and another for COSMOS Magazine, the leading science publication in Australia. Pesce also helms two podcasts: The award-winning 'The Next Billion Seconds' and 'This Week in Startups Australia’. With VRML co-inventor Tony Parisi, recently released the highly-praised, award-nominated series “A Brief History of the Metaverse”.
Published by Polity Press in 2001, Pesce’s previous book, Augmented Reality: Unboxing Tech’s Next Big Thing, critiques the design and implementation of augmented reality systems, questioning whether these hypothecated devices truly serve their users - or simply stream valuable data back to their manufacturers.
Presentations
