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The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

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Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#71

Post by pfannkuchen »

dahart wrote: post #68
johnnyanmac wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't really get what happened there. They found out 20 years later than it was a cropped image from Playboy, and eventually both Playboy and the model were fine with it being used for research purposes. Then another 20 years later people re-discovered this and now it was sexist? Regardless, I read some other literature and I do agree that it was probably well past time to update a reference image that wasnt…

FWIW, this isn’t an accurate summary of what happened with the Lena image at all, and the story and reasons behind it’s decline are easily available online. If you want to understand it, maybe it’s worth looking up? Lena is publicly on board with the movement to stop using her image for research, and it is irrelevant that Playboy has waived their copyrights. The reasons the image is discouraged are to promote profess…

> Imagine if female teachers put up Chippendale’s posters in the classroom

Isn’t it more like if female researchers used the cropped head-only photo of a Chippendale’s guy in an image processing paper?

Shifting it to an “interfacing with an authority figure for children” role is not really fair IMO, as I think that is why most would find it distasteful.

Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#72

Post by dahart »

Recently Utah had a small commemorative conference where the photo in the picture was taken. Ivan Sutherland attended, and gave what I thought was the best talk, about nothing to do with graphics. He’s actively doing research on Single Quantum Flux circuits at 85 years old! [1] He’s trying to spread the word that the US is about to miss out on the next hardware revolution because we’re not paying attention to SQF. [2] The talk is awesome and worth watching. Anyway, I feel like this was a sneak peek into one of the biggest reasons why that early graphics team was so successful, Ivan’s amazing. Combined with some other magic ingredients, their environment was special, and I think, sadly, unreproducible.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/live/LUFp6sjKbkE?feature=share (For Ivan’s talk, scroll to 5:50:00 - that’s 5 hours and fifty minutes in.)

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/19/technology/ivan-sutherlan...

Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#73

Post by dahart »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #71
dahart wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, this isn’t an accurate summary of what happened with the Lena image at all, and the story and reasons behind it’s decline are easily available online. If you want to understand it, maybe it’s worth looking up? Lena is publicly on board with the movement to stop using her image for research, and it is irrelevant that Playboy has waived their copyrights. The reasons the image is discouraged are to promote profess…

> Imagine if female teachers put up Chippendale’s posters in the classroom Isn’t it more like if female researchers used the cropped head-only photo of a Chippendale’s guy in an image processing paper? Shifting it to an “interfacing with an authority figure for children” role is not really fair IMO, as I think that is why most would find it distasteful.

The situation isn’t being shifted to interfacing with an authority figure for children. That’s what it already was! Maybe not primarily, but don’t miss the very point that research is setting an example and it percolates widely outside of college journals into textbooks, onto the internet, into videos, into work, and into homes. The movement is centered on the simple idea that we need to take the fact that we’re setting examples for young women and young men alike slightly more seriously.

Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#74

Post by photonerd »

supportlocal4h wrote: post #65
photonerd wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, Utah really lagged on getting an ISP, huh? From a UK perspective: my family got dual up in ‘94, there were lots of ISP options & it was basically impossible to buy anything slower than 28.8k new (at retail anyhow, I’m sure you could special order) as no-where stocked them. 28.8 took over fast . I think the UK had lots pf ISPs at the time because without a local number to call it was VERY expensive rather than ju…

Commercial ISP. People had dialup internet access before there were commercial ISPs.

Yes, I’m aware. That’s what I was talking about

Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#75

Post by cubefox »

dahart wrote: post #68
johnnyanmac wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't really get what happened there. They found out 20 years later than it was a cropped image from Playboy, and eventually both Playboy and the model were fine with it being used for research purposes. Then another 20 years later people re-discovered this and now it was sexist? Regardless, I read some other literature and I do agree that it was probably well past time to update a reference image that wasnt…

FWIW, this isn’t an accurate summary of what happened with the Lena image at all, and the story and reasons behind it’s decline are easily available online. If you want to understand it, maybe it’s worth looking up? Lena is publicly on board with the movement to stop using her image for research, and it is irrelevant that Playboy has waived their copyrights. The reasons the image is discouraged are to promote profess…

I reject your accusations. Claiming without evidence that the Lena image is harmful is about as absurd as claiming the face of the statue of David is harmful. That's another often used picture, and of course completely ignored by the breathless "sexism!" yellers.

Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#76

Post by CynAq »

elliotec wrote: post #18

The University of Utah was also the fourth node of ARPANET, the predecessor of the internet - https://www.lib.utah.edu/digital-scholarship/arpanet/ On a personal note, this is also part of why I exist at all. My father came from England very young, worked his way through agriculture jobs in California, and somehow found himself with a job offer at the u of u as an electron microscopist. Met my mom there. Details are…

I can only imagine how cool it must be to be raised by early adopters of internet technology.

I can somewhat relate to this story in a couple coincidental points. First is that my father being a relatively early adopter of the PC in his professional life as a civil engineer in the early 80s, while an internet connection was about twenty years in the future for him, and the second one is that I learned electron microscopy on a Jeol microscope from 1994 when I was doing my master's in material science.

And this is my first comment in HN. I hope everyone is doing wonderfully well.

Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#77

Post by dahart »

cubefox wrote: post #75
dahart wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, this isn’t an accurate summary of what happened with the Lena image at all, and the story and reasons behind it’s decline are easily available online. If you want to understand it, maybe it’s worth looking up? Lena is publicly on board with the movement to stop using her image for research, and it is irrelevant that Playboy has waived their copyrights. The reasons the image is discouraged are to promote profess…

I reject your accusations. Claiming without evidence that the Lena image is harmful is about as absurd as claiming the face of the statue of David is harmful. That's another often used picture, and of course completely ignored by the breathless "sexism!" yellers.

David wasn’t made with the intent to be pornographic. Lena’s picture was. Being unaware of the evidence doesn’t mean there isn’t any. There’s plenty of evidence of the mild bias inherent in the use of Lena, if you actually want to find the evidence. Lots of women have mentioned their mild discomfort with seeing it in a professional setting. There’s a documentary about this story called “Losing Lena”.

Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#78

Post by bluedino »

riceart wrote: post #49
elliotec wrote: post #18

The University of Utah was also the fourth node of ARPANET, the predecessor of the internet - https://www.lib.utah.edu/digital-scholarship/arpanet/ On a personal note, this is also part of why I exist at all. My father came from England very young, worked his way through agriculture jobs in California, and somehow found himself with a job offer at the u of u as an electron microscopist. Met my mom there. Details are…

1994 was way way after dialup Internet access was mainstream (both Yahoo and Amazon were founded that year). Any first access in the state would be sometime in the 80s. By 1993 there were already national level dialup ISPs. > that was about as long [15 minutes] as it took to load one webpage with one image. Very hyperbolic. A simple webpage with text would load in seconds on a 28.8k modem. A single image would usuall…

I would say dial up Internet was far from mainstream in 94, even with was widely available.

I'd argue it wasn't until 96/97 when "everyone" started using it and membership didn't quite peak with services like AOL until 2001.

The internet was still the land of the nerds until the early 2000's

Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#79

Post by cubefox »

dahart wrote: post #77
cubefox wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reject your accusations. Claiming without evidence that the Lena image is harmful is about as absurd as claiming the face of the statue of David is harmful. That's another often used picture, and of course completely ignored by the breathless "sexism!" yellers.

David wasn’t made with the intent to be pornographic. Lena’s picture was. Being unaware of the evidence doesn’t mean there isn’t any. There’s plenty of evidence of the mild bias inherent in the use of Lena, if you actually want to find the evidence. Lots of women have mentioned their mild discomfort with seeing it in a professional setting. There’s a documentary about this story called “Losing Lena”.

When someone experiences "mild discomfort" when seeing David (it does display an idealized nude man, which could also be said about the Lena photo, which is far too artistic to be merely called "pornography") then this is still no reason to banish the David photo. If everything gets banned that someone could potentially be mildly offended by, then we would have to ban a hell of a lot of images in research and academia. Another commenter made a comparison to Christian puritanism. A devout Christian might be offended both by Lena and by David. Or think of a devout Muslim woman being deeply offended by the sight of da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.

Re: The computer graphics industry got started at the university of Utah

#80

Post by riceart »

dgacmu wrote: post #56
riceart wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1994 was way way after dialup Internet access was mainstream (both Yahoo and Amazon were founded that year). Any first access in the state would be sometime in the 80s. By 1993 there were already national level dialup ISPs. > that was about as long [15 minutes] as it took to load one webpage with one image. Very hyperbolic. A simple webpage with text would load in seconds on a 28.8k modem. A single image would usuall…

This is not correct for access open to the general public. The first commercial ISP in Utah, Xmission, was founded in 1993. Yes, many of us had internet access through the University of Utah before that (Pete Ashdown, the founder, had worked at Evans & Sutherland, which had quite good internet connectivity). But most people did not if they weren't associated with a university. (I helped create the third public ISP in…

> This is not correct for access open to the general public. The first commercial ISP in Utah, Xmission, was founded in 1993. Yes, many of us had internet access through the University of Utah before that (Pete Ashdown, the founder, had worked at Evans & Sutherland, which had quite good internet connectivity).

> The commercial Internet really only started taking off in 1993.

1993 is before 1994.

I am very much scratching my head by how this contradicts anything I stated in a way that makes it not correct.

If a commercial ISP existed in 1993, then by 1994 plenty of regular people would have been getting internet access - without any special affiliation other than a credit card - ie mainstream. (Per your own comment “many had internet access before that”) - those affiliated were among the first to have internet access is a pretty reasonable interpretation and that was well before 1994 in all of the continental US.

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