GRAVITY THIRTY TWO -- Friday, October 16, 1992

We launch a press campaign. I know exactly what it takes to get every
magazine in the industry to carry the message. I know what it takes to
get them to run our press release. I know what it takes to get editors
together in a room at the Waldorf Astoria, patiently waiting for the big
event, ready to write about it in a big way.

It takes money. It takes intrigue. It take a hugely expensive string of
advertisements in each of the trade mags: Byte, PC, InfoWeek, MacUser, Dr. Dobbs, PC World, MacWorld, etc. It takes plane tickets to NYC for a free lunch and a press kit. It takes conspiratorial text like this to give them something new to write about. Make no mistake: the two products I've mentioned, ThoughtShop and Mu, along with the very idea of Gravity, will cause people in the industry to talk. I'm offering a new breed of software, something that replaces word, image, and sound processing products as well as development environments, electronic mail and work-group software, expert system shells, databases, spreadsheets, bulletin boards and information utilities, and communications software. The only brand of software not
affected is systems software, and there's a good reason for this. It's
too platform-specific, and requires more here-and-now efficiency than
Gravity can handle with today's hardware.

They'll talk because of our piecemeal approach. Each user has one piece of software, and beyond that can buy feature after feature to get it to do whatever he or she wants. You need better indexing capabilities for the book you're writing? Call up the Writer's Garret, a ThoughtShop in New Haven, Ct, and they'll send over a system that does what you need. You need a set of rules for estimating a residential plumbing contract? Call up Boon Brothers Contruction ThoughtShop down in San Carlos, Florida, and they'll gladly transmit the items that suit your needs.

Don't you get it? The press will love it. It takes the appeal of shareware as a means for software distribution and makes it practical. It realizes the dream for a truly platform-independent base for software systems. People don't want to hear about operating systems, GUIs, communication protocols, multi-media, desktop publishing tools.... they just want to use them.

"There is One and that is All."

That's the slogan. We pump up the idea as a clear-the-slate kind of thing. We tell the press we're taking the best from all that exists, integrating it into one system of products, and creating a new distribution scheme to boot.

We run a series of ads after the preliminary press releases have been
issued, after eighty-one ThoughtShops are in operation around the world. These ads are the teaser campaign. They highlight the date of the unveiling, the date we invite the press to lunch. We hint around the on-line world just what it is we're going to do. This will generate a good amount of word-of-mouth anticipation, much as the impending Michelangelo virus did.

Then the big day arrives. We fill the room. We give our wowee press
presentation. We let them all use Mu to connect to the ThoughtShop network. We demonstrate ThoughtShop and Mu. We give them all a Gravity Guide, which explains Gravity, Mu, and ThoughtShop in the same style as these notes. We give them the Mu program so they can connect from their own machines. We give out a press kit, and then let them eat. After lunch we sit them down, make our closing remarks, and press one single key.

This key will cause a chain reaction among the eighty-one ThoughtShops. The NYC ThoughtShop will call three others, which will call three others, etc... Each will get the signal to start broadcasting "The Gravity Demo" to every public-access computer system in the world. These eighty-one ThoughtShops will log on to more than five thousand systems in one weekend. In one grand Blast It Out effort, we'll publish the Demo to the world.

Big Bang. The Birth of Gravity.

Then we wait. Let's say you've heard the rumors. You've heard that this Demo will be sent all over, and you're just a bit curious. You log on to your local bulletin board, and there's versions of the Demo for each kind of microcomputer. You download a copy and run the sucker. It starts with a lively graphical explanation of the whole schpeel, and then offers to connect to the nearest ThoughtShop. Once connected, you get to use the Demo as if it were a full-fledged Mu, with the one exception that it won't work when you disconnect. You can't purchase information items. You can't do anything unless you're on-line.

So the Demo makes the offer... for $33, this ThoughtShop will automatically transmit the actual Mu program to your machine and install it. This will entitle you to a full year's subscription to the ThoughtShop network. All that's required is a VISA account number or an EFT bank number, just like CompuServe, Bix, and a lot of other on-line services require.

You give the ThoughtShop your billing information, and Mu is automatically installed. In a week, you get a Gravity Guide, disks, a copy of the current issue of Immuexa, and a hardware Gravity key which plugs into your computer's printer port. This serial number serves as your password to the system. It uniquely identifies you as a member of the network. Additionally, you can pay more money to have your computer become a ThoughtShop. Let's say colonization costs a grand.

Now let's look at some numbers. Assuming that 5000 copies of the Demo are sent around the world, and each of these copies generates ten $33 subscriptions over a period of three months.... that's $1,650,000. If a hundred of these fifty thousand new subscribers take the plunge and become a ThoughtShop, that's another $100,000 with of course the added bonus of having a hundred extra ThoughtShops in the network. However it works out statistically, enough people will spend bucks just to check it out to make this a wildly successful campaign. The success of the gimmick will generate more press (especially since the press boys were there when the button was pushed) and this will mean even more people will spend their $33 to access the network and receive Mu.

Understand: it's not a CompuServe. You don't have to pay for the time you spend on the system. You pay a flat-fee for a yearly subscription, and this price includes a very useful stand-alone product: Mu.

So what do we do with the money? Well first off, pay off the investors
who put up the bucks for the press campaign. Then pull a Paul Newman and tell everyone you're giving the rest away to a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting creative expression on the new medium. Then stop the advertising and settle down to a creativist lifestyle of balance, inspiration, and self-sufficiency.

Then watch it work. Watch things change. With the patience of a
Taoist sage, we'll all quietly create and watch others arrive.

...

That's it!

I've enjoyed writing these notes. Thanks for your time. If you'd like
to receive a transcript of this series (with responses) as well as a
twenty-five page document that fully describes the Nine Principles and
the new medium, give me a call or drop me a note...

Timothy Falconer
844 Tombler Street
Bethlehem, PA 18015
610-882-5882

I'm outta here. ** Poof **