Great profile of Alvy Ray Smith by Steven Levy. Several great anecdotes, leading with:
āThis might be crazy,ā she began, ābut is there any connection between the world of the counterculture and psychedelics, and Pixar?ā The panelists on stageāEd Catmull and John Lasseter, both central to Pixarās developmentāfell into an uncomfortable silence. Drugs and the counterculture are edgy subjects for employees of a Disney division beloved by generations of children. Finally, Lasseter said, āIs Alvy Ray Smith in the audience?ā
From there, the crossing of paths with George Lucas and Steve Jobs ā no love lost there. Also, I find this almost shockingly compelling:
Putting together their contributions on the nature of light, sampling, and computation, Smith makes a convincing case that thereās no difference between analog and digital reality. Itās a belief that heās held for decades. Barbara Robertson, a computer graphics journalist, remembers sitting with him at a cafĆ© and hearing him say, after a contemplative silence, āYou, know, everything is just waves.ā
He also grew up, quite literally, under a mushroom cloud ā just 100 miles from the Trinity atomic bomb test when he was an infant.
