The Billion Dollar Code (2021) s01e01 Episode Script
Episode 1
This is our latest design.
The Z22 electronic calculator.
We are young
We are free ♪
[man] The digital era was shaped
by a handful of truly great inventions
that changed our lives.
They were beloved, sometimes cursed,
but one thing has always
been impossible: ignoring them.
The idea is that, eventually,
everyone will use a computer
as a very important tool.
[man] And the stories behind these
inventions are nearly always the same.
A few computer nerds sit together
and have an idea.
The idea seems absurd
at first, unfeasible.
But because that idea
is so new, so compelling,
it is simply unstoppable.
Ah! Shit, yeah!
But we think we've got something.
That's what it looks like.
[audience cheering]
[man] The computer nerds
drop out of university,
and although it was never about money,
they end up billionaires at 30.
[Musk] It is a moment in my life.
- [engine revs]
- [Musk laughs]
[man] Suddenly, their names
and life stories are known to all.
They buy their favourite sports team,
fly into outer space.
They marry their childhood sweetheart
or a Victoria's Secret model.
And from then on, they feel like
the true masters of this new world.
- [people cheer]
- [man whoops]
One of those inventions was ours.
One that changed the way
we looked at the world forever.
But no one knows our story.
We were cheated out of it by Google.
But we're going to change that now.
[techno music playing]
- Are the cameras rolling?
- Yes, it's running.
6 WEEKS BEFORE THE TRIAL
PREPARING FOR TRIAL
- Ready?
- Ready when you are.
Art+Com versus Google, day one.
Questioning of plaintiff,
Carsten Schlüter,
regarding patent infringement
of Terravision by Google Earth.
Recording begins at 9:43.
[exhales deeply]
Please state your name.
Carsten Schlüter.
Are you aware
that you're testifying under oath today?
- [Carsten] Yeah.
- Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth
- and nothing but the truth?
- I swear.
Herr Schlüter, you were one
of the main developers involved
- in Terravision's creation.
- Correct, yeah.
- Alongside Juri Müller?
- Mm-hm.
Please tell us how this collaboration
originally came about.
[techno music playing]
[Carsten]
It was in the early '90s, in Berlin.
A few years after the wall came down.
The eastern part of the city
was still in turmoil.
Everything was temporary and improvised.
And completely different from the
small-town life I knew in West Germany.
At that time, I was a student
at the Berlin University of Arts by day,
by night I could usually be found
in one of the illegal clubs or bars
that used to pop up
in new places every week.
[techno music playing]
That was also where I showed my work.
I wasn't at all interested in art
in the traditional sense of the word.
I wanted to make pieces that were new,
that had never existed before,
like video installations, digital art,
virtual reality.
Yes.
I was determined to be avant-garde.
Oh, bugger.
- Where have I ended up now?
- [beeps]
I think I'm stuck. Where?
Where is the exit? Where's the exit?
No, it won't move anymore.
I'm waving the glove around, but
[Carsten] To be honest,
I thought my work was rather brilliant.
And the people around me,
the ones that mattered, they found it
interesting, at least.
- That can just sometimes happen.
- Mm-hm.
[Carsten] But my professors
Yeah.
somehow they felt different.
So maybe I could say
a few words about all this.
That would be good. Yeah.
Yeah. So, I mean, art has always been
about seeing the world
and trying to represent
and perceive it in new ways.
But it was only ever able to do that
for a fraction of it,
which has always fascinated me.
And my work here attempts to view
the complete spectrum of the planet,
in an alternative and artificial reality.
But I wanted to move around, and I can.
In real time.
And I think that achieves something
art has never been able to do until now.
To access the world in its entirety.
And I know
that it may sound provocative, yeah,
I wanted to create the greatest artwork
ever witnessed, and I have.
"The greatest artwork ever witnessed."
- You've achieved that then, you reckon?
- [Carsten] Mm.
Before you show us the greatest artwork
ever witnessed in an alternative reality,
how about actually making art?
- [man chuckles]
- Hmm?
[Carsten sighs]
Art doesn't reload.
And art doesn't crash.
And art is not about simply replicating
and reproducing the world, like for like.
It's about more than that.
Yeah. When a photographer exhibited
the very first photographic exhibition,
they said that to them.
At least in the first place
he took a shit-hot photo.
I mean, not this Pac-Man shit that's here.
That's not art,
that's a system loading error.
[Carsten] Oh, man. What a nightmare.
And my professors
were actually right about one thing.
I needed help from someone
who could do some programming.
Shit!
[rock music playing]
- Please state your name.
- Juri Müller.
[woman] Do you solemnly swear to tell
the truth and nothing but the truth?
I swear.
You were one of the main developers
involved in Terravision's creation?
Mm.
[techno music playing]
[woman] Please tell us how
this collaboration originally came about.
[Juri] I used to hand out flyers
to make money,
and there was an installation
in one of the clubs.
Nowadays,
kids can do that with a smartphone,
but back then, in the early '90s,
it was very new.
I found it absolutely fascinating.
But the programming was so bad.
Hey.
Hey.
Is that an algorithm?
Yeah.
That is so awesome!
That is like like
The idea is to expand consciousness
through computers.
That's what I'm going for anyway.
The skipping
It's annoying, I know.
But I couldn't get it any better.
- I know how you could.
- Yeah?
It's to do with texture mapping.
You need to write a manage algorithm.
Hey, Carsten, come on, dude.
Come and dance.
[Carsten] Wait a sec.
Write a manage algorithm
that will divide your texture
into smaller 128-by-128 pixel bits,
send those to the bus,
then reassemble them.
- Carsten, come on!
- Don't go anywhere, yeah?
- Carsten!
- I'll be back, okay?
[man] Come on!
Whoo-hoo!
[Juri] My whole life,
I'd been a lone wolf.
A computer nerd.
I never would've
normally talked to Carsten.
But the one thing I was really good at
was programming.
And I knew the answer to his problems.
[Carsten]
I wasn't really receptive that evening,
so we agreed to meet a few days later.
Juri was a member
of the Chaos Computer Club.
It was legendary in the early '90s
as the guardian of the freedom
of information and data protection.
- Chaos Computer Club?
- One floor up.
- Thanks.
- [Carsten] And notorious for their hacks.
[man in German] The postmaster general
will be sorry to hear this,
but it turns out,
the Federal Post's on-screen text system
isn't intrusion-proof.
[man in English]
Most available storage capacity.
What we did is simply use a decoder
to make full use of it.
This enabled us to show
that a user could be relieved
of 130,000 deutsche marks overnight.
- Delete all the 86s, okay?
- Yeah.
And get rid of the drives for the 48s.
- Christine?
- [Christine] Yes, I'm on it.
[in German] Pass me the screwdriver?
Hey.
Hey.
- Are you?
- Back on Earth? Yeah.
So the other night you mentioned
something. Texture mapping, you said.
I can show you.
Right now, on a supercomputer.
Let's go. It's hard to explain.
- Showing you is easier. Can you take this?
- Yeah, yeah. Sure.
Yesterday, there was a hacking.
And we know the police
will be showing up here soon.
To raid us.
Data is the weapon of the future.
Whoever controls data controls the world.
So if we don't fight against that,
in the future,
all of our data
will be in the wrong hands.
There's 100 million marks' worth
of tech equipment in there, believe me.
Really?
After the wall fell, the Socialist Party
had 150 million marks in their accounts
which they didn't wanna cough up, so they
smuggled their money to their comrades
through some old Cold War channels.
But they knew no one could chase them,
and so they pocketed the money themselves.
[chuckles, gasps]
And now all those ex-Communists
are in computer animation.
- [chuckles]
- Let's go.
I wrote a 3D converter for them, ages ago.
But they never changed the access code,
which is practical
when you need a high-end machine.
Shh.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[lock beeps, buzzes]
I'm warning you,
get ready for a huge shock.
No way.
An Onyx with RealityEngine.
I thought there weren't any in Berlin yet.
Isn't this what
Terminator 2 was made with?
Yeah, what I wanted to show you.
Check this.
[computer beeps]
Here. Your main problem is texture memory.
It's no more than four megabytes.
That's where the jammer goes.
If you format your texture
so that the resolution
is exactly 128-by-128 pixels
and you use four channels,
so RGB plus the Alpha channel,
then, at that point, you have
a special bus incorporated in there.
Which makes it run so fast,
a hundred times quicker.
Okay.
Is that in real time?
[Juri] That's real time.
No skipping.
It means no reloading.
This is unbelievable.
Even Silicon Graphics
don't know about this,
and they're the ones
building these things.
- Why did you decide on Earth?
- Superman.
- What about Superman?
- Superman flies around the world.
When he flies, the world isn't shaky.
[both chuckle]
Now imagine if you could do that
with the entire world. I mean
But really close in.
Imagine somewhere you want to see
and then just fly straight in
from outer space, to anywhere you want.
But in real time.
No skipping, just like here.
- [door opens]
- [man] Hello?
Is someone here?
[rock music playing]
- Stop!
- Quick!
Hey! Stop!
[panting, chuckling]
Hungry?
I mean, seriously. Imagine
you could fly in from outer space
- all the way here, to this kebab stand.
- That'd be awesome.
It'd be the biggest virtual artwork
of all time.
I mean, sometime last year,
there was a book I read.
It'll be the Bible of the 21st century.
The idea in there is
that hackers will become
the artists of the 21st century.
I know.
- What?
- Snow Crash.
By Neal Stephenson.
- You've also read it then?
- At least three times.
[chuckles]
Okay. Neuromancer?
No way! Okay. What else have you read?
The Big U, for example.
- Or have you heard of Zodiac?
- Yeah, of course!
Juri, we've got to make this happen.
We can't not do this.
Yeah, but it's
It's technically impossible.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.
I'd give it
- say ten years.
- [woman] Why technically impossible?
I had shown Carsten Schlüter
nothing more than a demo,
where a single satellite image
had been zoomed in on.
For our idea to work,
we would have needed millions of images.
And at that time, the memory of a computer
could only store, say, a thousand photos.
Okay, but what would we need,
theoretically?
- The technical requirements?
- Yeah.
- An Onyx with RealityEngine.
- No shit. What's the cost of that?
A million deutsche mark.
Oh.
- I don't even have an account.
- Yeah, nor me.
But hang on.
There is a possibility we could
get an Onyx in our possession.
And that possibility was Deutsche Telekom?
Or the Deutsche Post AG,
as it used to be called. Mm.
And why exactly
was Deutsche Telekom your only option?
Well, before the wall was knocked down,
- state-owned companies were required
- [man] Excuse me.
Excuse me,
Frau Hauswirth, but what's your point?
Your question, where is it leading us?
It serves to aid our understanding
of what my clients' situation was in 1993.
That I've already understood.
But where are you going with this?
Could we take a short break? Eric?
- That was not the deal.
- [Eric] What was not the deal?
The deal that I started questioning.
I don't think
the questions are relevant to the case.
My questions are relevant to the case.
No, they're not.
They're not gonna be relevant
in court either. You know that.
We know what you're trying
to do here with these sentimental stories.
You're trying to turn your two clients
into computer-age Robin Hoods.
- Yes. And maybe they are.
- To get the jury to sympathise with them?
Look, I will stymie
that attempt in court in five minutes.
And what's more,
if you decide to play the game this way,
then I'm perfectly
within my rights to challenge you.
I'm representing one of
the biggest companies in the world here.
And we're gonna win it.
[Hauswirth] You know what?
I'm not playing.
Let's proceed.
Why did you need Deutsche Telekom?
I was saying,
before the wall was knocked down,
state-owned companies
were required to inject
as much as they could into Berlin
to make the city stay afloat.
Even in 1993,
three years after the wall came down,
Deutsche Telekom still had to invest
umpteen millions every year
in future technologies.
[announcer in German] Teletex, a
communications service by DeutscheTelekom.
[Carsten in English]
The problem was that in the early '90s,
there was no technological research
in Berlin.
They had no idea what to invest in.
To be blunt,
they invited everyone and anyone
who could find the "on" button on a PC
to get involved.
[in German] How much is it?
One mark.
[in English] Deutsche Telekom,
they're our nemesis.
Just last year, I hacked them.
I can't let anybody at Chaos Computer Club
know. It's embarrassing.
- Herr Schlüter and Herr Müller.
- Yes?
It will be the first
complete mapping of Earth on a computer.
This means you'd be able to fly
to any place in the world in real time.
This demonstrates it coming here
to Deutsche Telekom, for example.
Herr Breuer, where were you born?
Lüneburger Heide.
Wouldn't you like to fly back there?
Hover above places where you would,
as a kid, spend time playing?
Or your old school?
- Yeah. I would like that.
- [Carsten] You'd be able to do that.
You could also visit places
you've never been to.
- Places you'd love to, if you could.
- So we're talking about millions of maps.
In all sorts of different formats.
From what I know of today's technology,
it is simply impossible
to access all of those maps in real time.
But that's exactly what you're telling me
that you're proposing. Am I right?
What is your solution?
We don't know the answer yet.
- [Breuer] You don't know yet?
- No, we don't know yet.
But a way will be found to do it.
- With your help, we could find a solution.
- [Breuer] Herr Schlüter, Herr Müller,
we all believe at Deutsche Telekom
we should support
technological innovation.
We're made to since that's what
our dear reunification chancellor,
Dr. Helmut Kohl, wants.
[Breuer] Projects that fathom
the possibilities of computers.
But those projects
have to be achievable within our lifetime.
- Yes. Thank you. [clearing throat]
- Yes. Thank you.
- So shall we move on to the next?
- So next would be?
- [woman] It's BT. Yeah.
- [Breuer] Teletex?
- [woman] Yes. BTX. Yes, exactly.
- [Breuer] Okay.
- So with that lady from your city, please.
- [Breuer] Good.
Wait a second.
Yeah, we don't know how we'll do it yet.
Is that not the true nature of innovation,
in wondering how we can achieve it?
I mean, if inventions from the beginning
had been guaranteed,
there would never have been
any inventions.
And if we are successful,
it would be something unprecedented.
That is the start of a revolution.
And someday, someone will ask you:
"Where were you
when the revolution started?"
I hope, for your sake,
you don't have to answer, "It passed us by
because we were all too scared."
"So just decided
that instead of the revolution,
we'll just carry out
the burning of the telephone book
onto a CD-ROM in its place."
- The telephone book?
- Yeah.
I know.
[Breuer] Yes, but, you know,
this could be something big
- if we make this work for us.
- It's only two of them.
Yes, but I
I'll be honest with you,
we have a dilemma.
Next year, we find ourselves
in Kyoto, at the ITU conference.
It's the biggest
telecommunications conference
in the world.
That is where
the standards of the future are set.
And we still aren't entirely sure
of how we want to present ourselves there.
We like your project.
I mean, personally,
I like it a great deal.
On the other hand,
it's an unbelievably expensive idea
- you've dreamt of.
- Unbelievably expensive
- is an understatement, yeah.
- Yeah, and we are a little sceptical and
[clears throat] Also, we aren't sure
if completing this project before Kyoto
would be possible to do.
Do you have
the appropriate infrastructure?
Do you have a team
able to develop such a project?
We have a fantastic team.
We have the best artists
and designers you could find in Berlin.
Artists?
As well as this Herr Müller here.
Belongs to an exclusive club
whose select members include
some of the most innovative
programmers and computer experts
from all over the world,
who are also part of our team.
Is anyone interested
in a computer art project?
For Deutsche Telekom?
[crowd chuckling]
[man chuckles]
I'm sorry, I can't help you.
I'm lost. [sighs]
Everything I touch
turns into worthless crap.
What about your master's degree
and your final assignment?
I'm putting that on ice.
Maybe it is mediocre after all.
[woman] No. Don't let your teachers
convince you of that.
Let us know
when the next art academy party is.
And these experts,
are they all happy to commit?
They can't wait.
I don't understand why you're asking me.
Because we need to create artwork here.
Computers can create artwork
and stunning visuals.
Computers are always
so shitty to deal with.
Exactly what we have here on this wall.
"Computers can change your life
for the better."
"Access to information must be free."
But Terravision goes
in the same direction, only far grander.
It's a world accessible
to all of our making.
The interface must be
something built by a sculptor.
And not this Pac-Man shit.
It's essential that contracts be drawn up.
- Yes.
- Can you guarantee
to deliver your project
for the Kyoto conference next year?
We can guarantee it.
Are you certain of that?
[chuckles softly]
Yeah.
Mm?
Hmm.
My congratulations.
- Congratulations.
- Thank you.
Thank you very much.
What have you called this idea?
Does it have a name?
Yeah, of course.
Terra.
Vision.
Terravision. Okay.
[both laughing]
Terravision. Is it?
- It sounds good.
- Yeah.
And what kind of computer
will it be built on?
An Onyx with RealityEngine.
No one in Germany
has an Onyx with RealityEngine.
We do. From Deutsche Telekom.
I'll be onboard.
And I will.
[Carsten] And you are
the most talented sculptor I know.
[chuckles shyly]
What I want to know is whether
we can use a small part of the budget
for other experimental things.
You okay with that?
- What kind of other things, though?
- Well, like synthetic drugs, for example.
[chuckles uncomfortably]
- Yeah, maybe. We'll see.
- Fine, I'll be involved then.
[chuckles]
- Mm?
- [grunts softly]
[techno music playing]
- Our office.
- [both chuckle]
This is awesome.
- [Eric] You gave your guarantee?
- We gave our guarantee, yeah.
Even though you had no idea if in
that time frame, you could get it done?
No one had tried anything like this.
We didn't know. Nobody could have known.
Herr Müller, I was asking you
something that was quite different.
At that point, Deutsche Telekom
agreed to finance your project,
under the condition that it was finished
before, I believe, one year later.
At that point,
were you aware it was impossible,
that there was no way you could deliver?
I'm not sure I understand
the direction of your questioning.
It's very simple. I'd like to know
if the project was falsely endorsed
under unachievable guarantees.
Herr Müller, did you lie
to Deutsche Telekom deliberately?
I don't believe
Deutsche Telekom were lied to.
We believed we had a chance to succeed.
And now we had the technical means
to set it in motion.
Thanks to Deutsche Telekom,
we were able to purchase
the Onyx with RealityEngine.
Two penniless students
Brian Anderson.
suddenly had
the highest performance computer
in the world at hand.
In a block on Breitscheidplatz,
right next to the Memorial Church.
Also, then it wasn't just
the two of us anymore.
There was a team of us
to make sure it would happen.
[pop music playing]
Christine. Ines. Alex.
You're in charge of the maps.
Satellite images, geodata, aerial images,
everything, of every place, in any format.
The important thing is
that we need satellite views
of every place on Earth
from different heights.
Thirty thousand metres,
15,000 metres, 1000 metres,
500 metres, 100 metres.
Anything you can get your hands on.
Otherwise, the flight effect
towards Earth won't work.
Those millions of satellite maps
need to be digitised.
And we need a huge database
so we can store and manage the maps.
This is what Frankie and Dos
will be coding.
Bernd
- and Schmölders
- Yes, here.
are fellow students at the UDK,
and will be taking care of the interface.
How do we operate Terravision?
How do we navigate the flight
from space to Earth?
How do we interact with the computer?
What kind of screen will we use?
And Juri has the easiest job.
He has to come up with an algorithm
to make all of this possible,
to access and process
all these satellite maps in real time.
Something nobody has thought of before.
But seriously, though,
we know that's the hardest part of all.
Juri's program
will be the core of Terravision.
And for now, nobody knows
if writing that program is even possible.
But without that core,
there will be no Terravision.
So your team
was a group of artists and hackers
who had never worked together before.
And a project as big as this
was certainly not something
they had any experience with.
Is that right?
- I'd say not
- [Eric] You would say not, Herr Müller.
I would say that back then, none of us
had been in proper work up to that point.
Which of you has a bank account?
Uh, me.
Schmölders, you've got an account?
I'm Swabian.
- [all chuckling]
- Okay, man, then you're our bookkeeper.
Oh I mean, no, no,
I'm a performance artist.
But you're a Swabian
and have a bank account.
That makes you more of an accountant
than anyone else here.
- Please give a warm round of applause.
- No, no.
for our bookkeeper, yeah?
[clapping, chuckling]
- Yeah. All right, kiss my ass.
- From now, the clock is ticking.
Even though some things
didn't work the first time
The satellite, the images, for example.
Obviously, we wanted
to obtain the satellite maps legally.
Deutsche Telekom
was our employer after all.
But after three months of phone calls
and begging and whatever else,
it became clear that we would never manage
to cover the whole world,
especially not in different resolutions.
That's all that we can get.
You mean that's all
they were willing to offer us?
[Hauswirth] So what did you do?
Well, what does a hacker do
at that moment? Hmm?
[Carsten]
Wow. How did you get them so fast?
Uh, how come
they say "NASA" all over them?
[all] Whoops.
[techno music playing]
Carsten. This is the first private company
website in Germany. [laughing]
And these here
Those are secured for us as well.
Telekom.de.
Telekom.com.
Miele.de.
Mercedes-Benz.de.
Hey, could you secure for me
Porno. de as well?
[all laughing]
What? What?
It's the future of the Internet, man!
Hey, hey, hey. Here.
Look, this is what I found
[Carsten] Even Bernd was almost euphoric,
by his standards anyway.
- Our enthusiasm had infected him.
- Great. Yes.
[Carsten] Yeah, he had
a real creative burst, it's fair to say.
It's all really useful.
But it didn't last too long.
Finding a control system
that was functional for the computer
and still looked like art
to the rest of the world?
That seemed impossible for him.
But it didn't matter.
Do you understand?
Obviously, whether we had
an interface or not,
or whether the satellite pictures
we had were correct
we had this fundamental, naive conviction
that all of it eventually would function.
Kyoto still seemed so far off.
[techno music playing]
Dos?
[yelps]
You swine!
[laughing]
Even Schmölders, who'd for a long time
fought against his fate,
at some indeterminable point, realised
he could no longer deny his calling.
Easy, easy. Let me pay the man.
I really need a receipt for this.
- Please.
- Yeah, yeah.
And it wasn't a bathtub
filled with fake blood,
or the performance art, no, no.
It was accounts after all.
Schmölders was born for bookkeeping.
I can't bill this to Deutsche Telekom.
I can't do it.
[sighs] It was a work meeting.
A work meeting?
Eighty-five schnapps and a little salad?
[chuckles]
Hey, got yourself a folder, I see.
Yeah, I Of course.
I need to stay a little organised.
- It's
- No. I think it's great.
Made it his living. And very successfully.
Seriously, it's really good.
Kiss my asshole.
Come on, Schmölders.
Looking back, you tend
to romanticise things a bit,
but still I honestly think
yeah, up until New Year's Eve, '93.
- Yeah.
- [fireworks booming]
I'd say we had the best time
of our lives up until that point.
[rock music playing]
[man] Yeah!
- So?
- So?
[man] Yeah!
And? How's things working out
in your Space Invaders world?
[laughs] My Space Invaders world?
[man] Hey, come here!
Man, you have no idea.
This will be the greatest thing
ever to come out
- of the University of Arts.
- Why?
I'll stuff it down my professors' throats.
You'll see.
Wow. It's about hurt feelings?
All about your wounded pride, is it?
No. It's not about that.
Oh, yeah, no, yeah. Okay.
Maybe just a little bit.
Come with me.
Look, I know that you're not 1,000%
convinced about the whole thing,
but we could really use some extra help
from someone
with good taste and intelligence
and with a feel
for the big picture, and I'm
Come on, let's dance.
[Juri] At that time,
none of the others knew
that I was completely overwhelmed
with my task.
I hadn't even told Carsten yet
because every day,
I still hoped that I would manage
to find the solution.
But I was running out of time,
and while everyone had their fun
and did their own part,
I was racking my brains
on how to bring this all together.
There was nothing to fall back on.
It hadn't been done before.
In the early '90s,
this was uncharted territory.
[party clamour continues]
We have a list of renowned
computer experts and consultants
and they were all asked the same question,
whether your enterprise, hmm, in 1993
was even feasible in light
of the technology available at that time.
Humour me, Herr Müller.
How many experts said it was possible?
It hadn't been done before.
There was no precedent.
You were trying to find
the solution for a problem
for something no one knew whether
there was a solution for as of yet.
Exactly. With that in mind,
I'd say very few experts
would have said it was possible then.
Not a single one.
See, business lunch, right?
Lunch break! Whoo!
[woman] Oh, yes.
- Yeah? Herb specials?
- Yeah.
- Yogurt sauce.
- [man] No onions?
That's the one without onions.
And extra hot for Juri.
Enjoy!
- Enjoy!
- Enjoy!
- Yum.
- Cheers.
Oh, yeah.
[man] I love kebabs.
Hey, here it was.
Less than a year ago.
Now we're doing it. Incredible, right?
[chuckling]
Come with me.
What is it?
We have a problem.
I-I must show you something. Only you.
Okay.
What's causing this?
Here.
This. This is the amount of data
that does fit in our working memory.
And this.
This is the amount of data we need
to fit in our working memory.
The list alone of our satellite maps is
bigger than our entire storage capacity.
But here I know what the problem is.
We've got another one.
A much bigger one.
Whenever I fly closer to the Earth,
these earthquakes happen.
Somewhere in my algorithm
there is a conceptual mistake,
and I have no idea where it is
or how to resolve it.
[sighs]
I'm I'm really worried. I
I'll be honest. I'm shitting my pants
that I might not be able to.
I
I'm starting to think
it's too complex for me.
I can't sleep anymore.
[Eric] You assured Deutsche Telekom
that you could deliver for Kyoto.
As your employer,
did they know about your issues?
Deutsche Telekom invested well over
a million deutsche mark in your project.
Were they even aware
of your problem or informed?
At that point, had they even seen
anything of Terravision?
Klaus, I know what I said.
It's going great.
I wish you could see for yourself.
[Eric] Herr Müller, I must remind you
that you're speaking under oath.
- No.
- [Eric] No, what?
Please use full sentences.
No, Deutsche Telekom
knew nothing of our problems.
And Deutsche Telekom,
had they even at that point
been shown any of your work at all?
No.
[Eric] You had two months left until Kyoto
and you hadn't shown anything
to Deutsche Telekom?
That's right.
[Carsten]
Because we only want to show you when
when we're 100% happy with it.
Mm-hm.
One week.
Thank you, Klaus. Ciao.
[whispers] One week.
[Eric] You must have known
that you would have
to show something eventually.
It was clear we couldn't avoid
showing them any longer.
So, week after week,
we prayed that it would finally work.
That we had finally
eliminated all the bugs.
[computer beeps]
[beeps]
Fuck!
[Schmölders]
Shit, Juri! Why is it still so crap?
[Carsten] In five days,
Deutsche Telekom will be at our door.
Can't you stop them coming?
We can't push back again, Juri.
I just can't do it.
- They want to see something now.
- I don't know what's wrong with it.
And five days won't be enough
to figure it out.
[Carsten]
Our hands are tied, we signed a contract.
[Schmölders]
One year down the drain, then. Thanks.
A debt of 2 million deutsche mark.
[sighs deeply]
At that point,
we all practically lived in the office.
We were all frankly overworked, and
Yeah, the atmosphere was undeniably tense.
Hey, guys! What the hell is this shit
in here? Why was it in the greenhouse?
Were you hiding this?
Let's be realistic,
we were all a little mad.
[pounds desk]
We didn't hide anything from you.
You've become paranoid!
Because I'm trying to do
the fucking accounting here.
But I can't do that
if you all throw your fucking receipts
in some random laundry basket!
Nobody gives a shit
about the fucking receipts.
And why do you think that would happen?
Because we are here, busy trying
to get this fucking shit programme
to work once and for all!
Well, get the shit programme
to work for Kyoto,
or Deutsche Telekom
won't pay the last instalments.
And we'll be here with one foot
in bankruptcy and the other in jail.
- The programme needs to work before Kyoto.
- We've still got their domain names.
- [Christine] Yeah!
- [Carsten] It was only a question of time
- before things boiled over.
- Calm down.
And, uh
well that was what happened in the end.
[shouting]
[Eric] At that moment,
did you personally believe
that you could finish Terravision
for the Kyoto conference?
[sombre music playing]
[Eric] Herr Müller?
At that moment, did you personally believe
that you could finish Terravision
for the Kyoto conference?
[panting]
No.
[typing]
[crowd shouting]
[heartbeat thumping]
[shouting continues]
[typing frantically]
[whistle blows]
[man] Juri!
[doctor]
Is he under an unusual amount of stress?
- Or pressure?
- [Carsten] Why?
His readings aren't good
and he's barely responsive.
I'd say it might be what we call
a hyperventilation syndrome, thus far.
He must take it seriously.
If it happens often,
it could be a sign of an anxiety disorder.
And then he'd need
proper medical attention.
- Does he have relatives in Berlin?
- They live in Hungary.
Mm. In any case,
I'm keeping him here overnight.
[video game beeping]
[indistinct chatter in background]
[Juri] Earlier, at the office,
it was as if my spirit
was leaving my body
and I was watching myself die
from the outside.
But I've never had it that bad before.
Wait. This wasn't the first time?
Juri, you really need
to have some treatment for this.
I'll quit if you want.
You'll find someone who can do it.
No. No one's better than you.
I can't do it.
It's fine, you know.
Okay, it's not completely fine,
but you know
What I mean is, I would never blame you
if you failed to achieve it.
And the others wouldn't.
None of us would.
Yeah.
Too many fucking leaves and branches.
Too many fucking leaves and branches.
Juri, Juri, Juri, you can't do that.
[grunting]
Yeah.
Shit!
Yeah. The same but smaller.
It's all a matter of perspective.
Say that once more.
[Carsten chuckles] What?
Say that once more, what you just said.
Yeah, sure. So, yeah, from another
perspective, it's just a normal flower.
From the perspective of an ant,
it means the tree is completely massive.
Yeah.
Jur Juri.
Juri, just wait there.
Hey. What's the matter with you?
I've worked out where the earthquakes come
from. It's so obvious. I must go back.
No.
Fine.
I'll get your stuff. You wait right here.
Okay, from the beginning.
Earth is always our starting point:
the view from outer space of the Earth.
This is our first satellite picture,
the map that every Terravision user
will see first.
[Carsten] Of course.
And then as we gradually fly
towards Earth,
we simply subdivide each map
into four maps, each 128-by-128 pixels.
So it becomes a quad tree.
That way, we can get the right resolution
and be fast enough for the texture memory.
Every satellite picture we need
will be stored in this upside-down tree.
Every path through the tree
is directly assigned to a map.
The search algorithm is at the same time
the code of the tree's branches.
The code of the tree's branches
is the search algorithm.
The problem I hadn't seen until now is
was the humble ant.
By locking on to one coordinate system,
the processor of the computer
couldn't display it
as it's in a floating-point number range.
So the processor would freak out
and divide everything by zero.
And that was the earthquake.
The solution is
we must let the coordinate system
be free to fly alone.
[Carsten] Juri had just sliced through
the Gordian knot. That night.
It was his moment of genius.
It was his Columbus' egg.
Taking all these elements,
you know, by speeding up the Onyx,
the quad tree
and the floating coordinate system,
and adding them all together that night.
And for every level,
a new scale is made for each step.
We then have a floating coordinate system.
That is our solution.
[Carsten] Before, each was only a tool,
but he had joined those and discovered
the algorithm for Terravision.
The first algorithm
that allowed free navigation
through an infinitely large
amount of data.
And honestly, even today,
the algorithm works exactly the same way
as the one he imagined back then. Yeah?
When we use navigation systems
or look for the way on our phones,
whatever, same one.
So, finally, you had the solution
to your problems you'd been looking for?
Well, yeah. In theory,
at least, no? [chuckles]
as it was in a floating-point number
and we kept locking on to one coordinate
[Schmölders] Hey. What's going on?
Looks like Juri's found a solution
to our earthquake problem.
It's all here, on the wall.
He calls it
a "floating coordinate system."
- And what about Deutsche Telekom?
- Coming in five hours, yeah.
[Schmölders] Can you manage
to programme it before that?
There's no way.
See, when you try to add to something
like that that's already been built
you must, in the shortest time, take
thousands of code and rewrite them all,
and it's not about getting it
90% right, not even 99%.
No, it has to be 100% right.
And if by chance, there is somewhere,
where two routines happen to try to gain
access to the processor at the same time,
then the system will crash, of course.
[Christine]
What if we tell them the truth?
That it's not yet functioning,
but Juri has a solution in hand.
We can't.
Why not?
[Carsten] For months, I've been
telling them that everything's perfect.
That only some touch-ups need to be made.
I cannot tell them the truth now.
- But you see what I'm saying, right?
- We are so sorry.
- The train had a problem.
- State-owned infrastructures, I mean.
Yeah, I'm just glad
you managed to come over.
- Klaus.
- Carsten. Helga.
- Hello.
- Hello.
Hello.
[Breuer] We got you a little something.
There was nothing better
that we could think of.
Instead of flowers.
- Here.
- [Carsten] Thank you.
- Oh, how eccentric.
- This is Bernd.
- Yes, hello. Hello.
- Hello.
Our satellite charts.
[woman] Nice to meet you.
All we have to do now
is decide where to go first.
Where should we go?
- Hmm.
- Uh
Okay, how about right here
on Breitscheidplatz?
- Yeah.
- Yeah. Yes.
- [Carsten] Yeah? Okay.
- Okay.
[Carsten] First stop: Breitscheidplatz.
[typing]
Unbelievable.
[Carsten] We can't tell them the truth,
otherwise they'll pull the plug.
We know that.
Shit.
We must tell another version.
Where do you live, Klaus?
- Um, Clayallee.
- Clayallee?
- That's a gorgeous area.
- It is.
How about that's where we fly to?
- Yes.
- [Carsten] Why not?
- Off to Clayallee.
- [Breuer] Oh!
[Carsten] When our truth won't do,
we need to feed them another truth.
An alternative reality, that version.
- Do you understand?
- Reality distortion field.
Exactly. Star Trek.
What What do you mean, Star Trek?
Yes, which episode?
"Talos IV."
The Talosians
were able to create an alternative reality
just with the power of their mental will.
Helga, I bet you play sports.
Yeah.
- [Carsten] Uh, rowing?
- [Helga] No, tennis.
- What's your club called then?
- VfK 01 in Charlottenburg.
How about going?
- Why not?
- Off to Charlottenburg.
We can't let them choose
where they're flying to,
but they'll think they're doing so.
Deutsche Telekom, Klaus Breuer.
Find out where he lives,
where he was born, where he plays sports.
Hamburg is a good idea. Hamburg?
- Hamburg.
- Hamburg.
[Carsten] These "supposedly"
freely-chosen destinations,
we know them already.
We've prepared them and recorded them.
All that's left is for us to play them.
- Madagascar.
- Africa.
- Provence.
- Provence?
Come on,
I've always wanted to go to Africa.
It last year, I was in Singapore
with my wife. I'd like to go back there.
Klaus, you're really sending us
all across the world.
Yes, it would mean something to her.
I can tell Ute about it later.
Mm.
Yes, I understand.
You know what, Klaus?
I'd say Asia is indeed a stellar idea.
I mean,
where are we all flying to in two weeks?
Kyoto. Kyoto.
- Kyoto.
- Kyoto.
[all chanting] Kyoto! Kyoto! Kyoto!
- Kyoto! Kyoto! Kyoto!
- You're the boss.
All right, Kyoto.
[all cheering]
Yeah. The next time we see each other
will be at the airport, won't it?
It will be. Hmm.
Well, you really gave us
some goose bumps in there.
Yes.
And you can't say that within Deutsche
Telekom's usual agenda, that's number one.
- No, not normally, no.
- [all laughing]
Tschüss.
Klaus.
- It was great.
- Helga, thank you.
- Tschüss!
- Tschüss!
[Helga] Tschüss.
- [Breuer] Yes, that really was fantastic.
- [team cheering]
[laughing]
[Christine] Oh, so good.
Good job.
- You're brilliant.
- That was fantastic.
- I was so nervous.
- So good.
[all laughing, chattering]
Guys! This is it.
A globe.
That's our interface.
That's how we operate.
Terravision.
- Yeah!
- [man] He's the man!
- [rock music playing]
- [all cheering]
- [screaming, shouting]
- [music continues]
[Eric] Did Juri Müller manage
to finish programming the algorithm
before your departure for Kyoto?
No.
[Eric] That means that,
up to that very day,
Terravision hadn't run properly
one single time?
That is correct, yes.
The day our flight left,
North Asia was hit by the worst storm
they'd had in years.
But Juri kept on working relentlessly.
It was like fate was sending us signs.
It seemed like Kyoto
simply didn't want us to arrive at all.
Welcome to Kyoto. My name is Haru.
We are so sorry for this storm.
Please follow me to the conference room.
I don't remember how high our chances
of getting it done in time were.
Juri had said to me they were
infinitely small, that's for sure.
But it was possible.
- The panel will be here soon.
- How are you getting on? Klaus, come on.
- Christine, Juri, does it work?
- Almost. We're close.
Okay, you've got 30 seconds, yeah?
And now?
Okay. Super.
[Carsten] At the very last second,
he managed to have
Terravision up and running.
- It's working.
- Are you sure?
Yeah.
It's live.
[Carsten] But as soon as one problem
was solved, another one came our way.
- Yeah.
- [announcer] Hello, Kyoto.
Live from San Francisco, the M People!
[Carsten] Just across from us,
the American telecommunications giant AT&
had an enormous display wall
consisting of parallel-connected screens,
which had never been seen before.
They had laid
a transoceanic fibre-optic cable,
especially for the event,
to stream a live concert
all the way from California.
That's as state-of-the-art
as it got back then.
[crowd cheering over screens]
["Moving On Up" playing over screens]
Movin' on up
Movin' on up ♪
Movin' on up ♪
Nothin' can stop me ♪
Movin' on up ♪
Compared to them, we were like a couple
of students with a science fair project.
[song continues]
[speaking Japanese]
Hello.
Here, you can turn.
Turn.
[Bernd] Like this. Yeah, turn.
Yeah. You see?
Do it.
[speaking Japanese]
- Japan. Japan.
- Yeah.
Nippon, Nippon.
Yeah. Move in.
- Do it. Carefully? Okay.
- [man] Okay.
[speaking Japanese]
My hometown.
[speaking Japanese]
House I was born.
[pleasant music playing]
[gasps]
Sato, Sato.
[speaking Japanese]
[Hauswirth] And what happened then?
And it all exploded.
Everyone really
Everyone that day at the conference
wanted to visit their hometown after that.
[indistinct chatter]
I can see the world. Wow.
Wow!
Okay, wait for this.
I just heard the U.S. Secretary of State
wanted to check out our stand.
Holy shit! [gasps]
[all chuckling]
Such a pleasure. Pleased to meet you.
This is my colleague, Helga Passow.
- [Hauswirth] And what year was that?
- [Carsten] 1994.
And when did Google release Google Earth?
- So 11 years later?
- [Carsten] That's right.
[Hauswirth] You've brought us a video?
- [Carsten] Yes.
- [Hauswirth] What'll we see in this video?
A flight into Breitscheidplatz,
and finishing at our old office building.
Left, we have Terravision,
Google Earth on the right.
- The Google Earth we all know?
- The same version used back then.
And that for everyone
was a sensation, wasn't it?
[Hauswirth] Please show the demo.
[Carsten]
This was also the version that included
the basics for all our navigation systems,
for geo-based sales systems.
All of which Google needs to operate,
and things which half the world
is now unable to live without.
With which Google has earned fortunes
to this day and continues to do so.
[Eric] There is no evidence
that Google has earned any money
with Google Earth.
It's about their invention,
your algorithm.
No evidence and it can't be proven.
Are you serious? It is right there!
How can Terravision and Google Earth
be so absolutely identical, then?
Because we were naive then.
An unbelievable error
was made at that time.
[ominous music playing]
[downtempo music playing]
Subtitle translation by
Michele Jochem Yunus
The Z22 electronic calculator.
We are young
We are free ♪
[man] The digital era was shaped
by a handful of truly great inventions
that changed our lives.
They were beloved, sometimes cursed,
but one thing has always
been impossible: ignoring them.
The idea is that, eventually,
everyone will use a computer
as a very important tool.
[man] And the stories behind these
inventions are nearly always the same.
A few computer nerds sit together
and have an idea.
The idea seems absurd
at first, unfeasible.
But because that idea
is so new, so compelling,
it is simply unstoppable.
Ah! Shit, yeah!
But we think we've got something.
That's what it looks like.
[audience cheering]
[man] The computer nerds
drop out of university,
and although it was never about money,
they end up billionaires at 30.
[Musk] It is a moment in my life.
- [engine revs]
- [Musk laughs]
[man] Suddenly, their names
and life stories are known to all.
They buy their favourite sports team,
fly into outer space.
They marry their childhood sweetheart
or a Victoria's Secret model.
And from then on, they feel like
the true masters of this new world.
- [people cheer]
- [man whoops]
One of those inventions was ours.
One that changed the way
we looked at the world forever.
But no one knows our story.
We were cheated out of it by Google.
But we're going to change that now.
[techno music playing]
- Are the cameras rolling?
- Yes, it's running.
6 WEEKS BEFORE THE TRIAL
PREPARING FOR TRIAL
- Ready?
- Ready when you are.
Art+Com versus Google, day one.
Questioning of plaintiff,
Carsten Schlüter,
regarding patent infringement
of Terravision by Google Earth.
Recording begins at 9:43.
[exhales deeply]
Please state your name.
Carsten Schlüter.
Are you aware
that you're testifying under oath today?
- [Carsten] Yeah.
- Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth
- and nothing but the truth?
- I swear.
Herr Schlüter, you were one
of the main developers involved
- in Terravision's creation.
- Correct, yeah.
- Alongside Juri Müller?
- Mm-hm.
Please tell us how this collaboration
originally came about.
[techno music playing]
[Carsten]
It was in the early '90s, in Berlin.
A few years after the wall came down.
The eastern part of the city
was still in turmoil.
Everything was temporary and improvised.
And completely different from the
small-town life I knew in West Germany.
At that time, I was a student
at the Berlin University of Arts by day,
by night I could usually be found
in one of the illegal clubs or bars
that used to pop up
in new places every week.
[techno music playing]
That was also where I showed my work.
I wasn't at all interested in art
in the traditional sense of the word.
I wanted to make pieces that were new,
that had never existed before,
like video installations, digital art,
virtual reality.
Yes.
I was determined to be avant-garde.
Oh, bugger.
- Where have I ended up now?
- [beeps]
I think I'm stuck. Where?
Where is the exit? Where's the exit?
No, it won't move anymore.
I'm waving the glove around, but
[Carsten] To be honest,
I thought my work was rather brilliant.
And the people around me,
the ones that mattered, they found it
interesting, at least.
- That can just sometimes happen.
- Mm-hm.
[Carsten] But my professors
Yeah.
somehow they felt different.
So maybe I could say
a few words about all this.
That would be good. Yeah.
Yeah. So, I mean, art has always been
about seeing the world
and trying to represent
and perceive it in new ways.
But it was only ever able to do that
for a fraction of it,
which has always fascinated me.
And my work here attempts to view
the complete spectrum of the planet,
in an alternative and artificial reality.
But I wanted to move around, and I can.
In real time.
And I think that achieves something
art has never been able to do until now.
To access the world in its entirety.
And I know
that it may sound provocative, yeah,
I wanted to create the greatest artwork
ever witnessed, and I have.
"The greatest artwork ever witnessed."
- You've achieved that then, you reckon?
- [Carsten] Mm.
Before you show us the greatest artwork
ever witnessed in an alternative reality,
how about actually making art?
- [man chuckles]
- Hmm?
[Carsten sighs]
Art doesn't reload.
And art doesn't crash.
And art is not about simply replicating
and reproducing the world, like for like.
It's about more than that.
Yeah. When a photographer exhibited
the very first photographic exhibition,
they said that to them.
At least in the first place
he took a shit-hot photo.
I mean, not this Pac-Man shit that's here.
That's not art,
that's a system loading error.
[Carsten] Oh, man. What a nightmare.
And my professors
were actually right about one thing.
I needed help from someone
who could do some programming.
Shit!
[rock music playing]
- Please state your name.
- Juri Müller.
[woman] Do you solemnly swear to tell
the truth and nothing but the truth?
I swear.
You were one of the main developers
involved in Terravision's creation?
Mm.
[techno music playing]
[woman] Please tell us how
this collaboration originally came about.
[Juri] I used to hand out flyers
to make money,
and there was an installation
in one of the clubs.
Nowadays,
kids can do that with a smartphone,
but back then, in the early '90s,
it was very new.
I found it absolutely fascinating.
But the programming was so bad.
Hey.
Hey.
Is that an algorithm?
Yeah.
That is so awesome!
That is like like
The idea is to expand consciousness
through computers.
That's what I'm going for anyway.
The skipping
It's annoying, I know.
But I couldn't get it any better.
- I know how you could.
- Yeah?
It's to do with texture mapping.
You need to write a manage algorithm.
Hey, Carsten, come on, dude.
Come and dance.
[Carsten] Wait a sec.
Write a manage algorithm
that will divide your texture
into smaller 128-by-128 pixel bits,
send those to the bus,
then reassemble them.
- Carsten, come on!
- Don't go anywhere, yeah?
- Carsten!
- I'll be back, okay?
[man] Come on!
Whoo-hoo!
[Juri] My whole life,
I'd been a lone wolf.
A computer nerd.
I never would've
normally talked to Carsten.
But the one thing I was really good at
was programming.
And I knew the answer to his problems.
[Carsten]
I wasn't really receptive that evening,
so we agreed to meet a few days later.
Juri was a member
of the Chaos Computer Club.
It was legendary in the early '90s
as the guardian of the freedom
of information and data protection.
- Chaos Computer Club?
- One floor up.
- Thanks.
- [Carsten] And notorious for their hacks.
[man in German] The postmaster general
will be sorry to hear this,
but it turns out,
the Federal Post's on-screen text system
isn't intrusion-proof.
[man in English]
Most available storage capacity.
What we did is simply use a decoder
to make full use of it.
This enabled us to show
that a user could be relieved
of 130,000 deutsche marks overnight.
- Delete all the 86s, okay?
- Yeah.
And get rid of the drives for the 48s.
- Christine?
- [Christine] Yes, I'm on it.
[in German] Pass me the screwdriver?
Hey.
Hey.
- Are you?
- Back on Earth? Yeah.
So the other night you mentioned
something. Texture mapping, you said.
I can show you.
Right now, on a supercomputer.
Let's go. It's hard to explain.
- Showing you is easier. Can you take this?
- Yeah, yeah. Sure.
Yesterday, there was a hacking.
And we know the police
will be showing up here soon.
To raid us.
Data is the weapon of the future.
Whoever controls data controls the world.
So if we don't fight against that,
in the future,
all of our data
will be in the wrong hands.
There's 100 million marks' worth
of tech equipment in there, believe me.
Really?
After the wall fell, the Socialist Party
had 150 million marks in their accounts
which they didn't wanna cough up, so they
smuggled their money to their comrades
through some old Cold War channels.
But they knew no one could chase them,
and so they pocketed the money themselves.
[chuckles, gasps]
And now all those ex-Communists
are in computer animation.
- [chuckles]
- Let's go.
I wrote a 3D converter for them, ages ago.
But they never changed the access code,
which is practical
when you need a high-end machine.
Shh.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[lock beeps, buzzes]
I'm warning you,
get ready for a huge shock.
No way.
An Onyx with RealityEngine.
I thought there weren't any in Berlin yet.
Isn't this what
Terminator 2 was made with?
Yeah, what I wanted to show you.
Check this.
[computer beeps]
Here. Your main problem is texture memory.
It's no more than four megabytes.
That's where the jammer goes.
If you format your texture
so that the resolution
is exactly 128-by-128 pixels
and you use four channels,
so RGB plus the Alpha channel,
then, at that point, you have
a special bus incorporated in there.
Which makes it run so fast,
a hundred times quicker.
Okay.
Is that in real time?
[Juri] That's real time.
No skipping.
It means no reloading.
This is unbelievable.
Even Silicon Graphics
don't know about this,
and they're the ones
building these things.
- Why did you decide on Earth?
- Superman.
- What about Superman?
- Superman flies around the world.
When he flies, the world isn't shaky.
[both chuckle]
Now imagine if you could do that
with the entire world. I mean
But really close in.
Imagine somewhere you want to see
and then just fly straight in
from outer space, to anywhere you want.
But in real time.
No skipping, just like here.
- [door opens]
- [man] Hello?
Is someone here?
[rock music playing]
- Stop!
- Quick!
Hey! Stop!
[panting, chuckling]
Hungry?
I mean, seriously. Imagine
you could fly in from outer space
- all the way here, to this kebab stand.
- That'd be awesome.
It'd be the biggest virtual artwork
of all time.
I mean, sometime last year,
there was a book I read.
It'll be the Bible of the 21st century.
The idea in there is
that hackers will become
the artists of the 21st century.
I know.
- What?
- Snow Crash.
By Neal Stephenson.
- You've also read it then?
- At least three times.
[chuckles]
Okay. Neuromancer?
No way! Okay. What else have you read?
The Big U, for example.
- Or have you heard of Zodiac?
- Yeah, of course!
Juri, we've got to make this happen.
We can't not do this.
Yeah, but it's
It's technically impossible.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.
I'd give it
- say ten years.
- [woman] Why technically impossible?
I had shown Carsten Schlüter
nothing more than a demo,
where a single satellite image
had been zoomed in on.
For our idea to work,
we would have needed millions of images.
And at that time, the memory of a computer
could only store, say, a thousand photos.
Okay, but what would we need,
theoretically?
- The technical requirements?
- Yeah.
- An Onyx with RealityEngine.
- No shit. What's the cost of that?
A million deutsche mark.
Oh.
- I don't even have an account.
- Yeah, nor me.
But hang on.
There is a possibility we could
get an Onyx in our possession.
And that possibility was Deutsche Telekom?
Or the Deutsche Post AG,
as it used to be called. Mm.
And why exactly
was Deutsche Telekom your only option?
Well, before the wall was knocked down,
- state-owned companies were required
- [man] Excuse me.
Excuse me,
Frau Hauswirth, but what's your point?
Your question, where is it leading us?
It serves to aid our understanding
of what my clients' situation was in 1993.
That I've already understood.
But where are you going with this?
Could we take a short break? Eric?
- That was not the deal.
- [Eric] What was not the deal?
The deal that I started questioning.
I don't think
the questions are relevant to the case.
My questions are relevant to the case.
No, they're not.
They're not gonna be relevant
in court either. You know that.
We know what you're trying
to do here with these sentimental stories.
You're trying to turn your two clients
into computer-age Robin Hoods.
- Yes. And maybe they are.
- To get the jury to sympathise with them?
Look, I will stymie
that attempt in court in five minutes.
And what's more,
if you decide to play the game this way,
then I'm perfectly
within my rights to challenge you.
I'm representing one of
the biggest companies in the world here.
And we're gonna win it.
[Hauswirth] You know what?
I'm not playing.
Let's proceed.
Why did you need Deutsche Telekom?
I was saying,
before the wall was knocked down,
state-owned companies
were required to inject
as much as they could into Berlin
to make the city stay afloat.
Even in 1993,
three years after the wall came down,
Deutsche Telekom still had to invest
umpteen millions every year
in future technologies.
[announcer in German] Teletex, a
communications service by DeutscheTelekom.
[Carsten in English]
The problem was that in the early '90s,
there was no technological research
in Berlin.
They had no idea what to invest in.
To be blunt,
they invited everyone and anyone
who could find the "on" button on a PC
to get involved.
[in German] How much is it?
One mark.
[in English] Deutsche Telekom,
they're our nemesis.
Just last year, I hacked them.
I can't let anybody at Chaos Computer Club
know. It's embarrassing.
- Herr Schlüter and Herr Müller.
- Yes?
It will be the first
complete mapping of Earth on a computer.
This means you'd be able to fly
to any place in the world in real time.
This demonstrates it coming here
to Deutsche Telekom, for example.
Herr Breuer, where were you born?
Lüneburger Heide.
Wouldn't you like to fly back there?
Hover above places where you would,
as a kid, spend time playing?
Or your old school?
- Yeah. I would like that.
- [Carsten] You'd be able to do that.
You could also visit places
you've never been to.
- Places you'd love to, if you could.
- So we're talking about millions of maps.
In all sorts of different formats.
From what I know of today's technology,
it is simply impossible
to access all of those maps in real time.
But that's exactly what you're telling me
that you're proposing. Am I right?
What is your solution?
We don't know the answer yet.
- [Breuer] You don't know yet?
- No, we don't know yet.
But a way will be found to do it.
- With your help, we could find a solution.
- [Breuer] Herr Schlüter, Herr Müller,
we all believe at Deutsche Telekom
we should support
technological innovation.
We're made to since that's what
our dear reunification chancellor,
Dr. Helmut Kohl, wants.
[Breuer] Projects that fathom
the possibilities of computers.
But those projects
have to be achievable within our lifetime.
- Yes. Thank you. [clearing throat]
- Yes. Thank you.
- So shall we move on to the next?
- So next would be?
- [woman] It's BT. Yeah.
- [Breuer] Teletex?
- [woman] Yes. BTX. Yes, exactly.
- [Breuer] Okay.
- So with that lady from your city, please.
- [Breuer] Good.
Wait a second.
Yeah, we don't know how we'll do it yet.
Is that not the true nature of innovation,
in wondering how we can achieve it?
I mean, if inventions from the beginning
had been guaranteed,
there would never have been
any inventions.
And if we are successful,
it would be something unprecedented.
That is the start of a revolution.
And someday, someone will ask you:
"Where were you
when the revolution started?"
I hope, for your sake,
you don't have to answer, "It passed us by
because we were all too scared."
"So just decided
that instead of the revolution,
we'll just carry out
the burning of the telephone book
onto a CD-ROM in its place."
- The telephone book?
- Yeah.
I know.
[Breuer] Yes, but, you know,
this could be something big
- if we make this work for us.
- It's only two of them.
Yes, but I
I'll be honest with you,
we have a dilemma.
Next year, we find ourselves
in Kyoto, at the ITU conference.
It's the biggest
telecommunications conference
in the world.
That is where
the standards of the future are set.
And we still aren't entirely sure
of how we want to present ourselves there.
We like your project.
I mean, personally,
I like it a great deal.
On the other hand,
it's an unbelievably expensive idea
- you've dreamt of.
- Unbelievably expensive
- is an understatement, yeah.
- Yeah, and we are a little sceptical and
[clears throat] Also, we aren't sure
if completing this project before Kyoto
would be possible to do.
Do you have
the appropriate infrastructure?
Do you have a team
able to develop such a project?
We have a fantastic team.
We have the best artists
and designers you could find in Berlin.
Artists?
As well as this Herr Müller here.
Belongs to an exclusive club
whose select members include
some of the most innovative
programmers and computer experts
from all over the world,
who are also part of our team.
Is anyone interested
in a computer art project?
For Deutsche Telekom?
[crowd chuckling]
[man chuckles]
I'm sorry, I can't help you.
I'm lost. [sighs]
Everything I touch
turns into worthless crap.
What about your master's degree
and your final assignment?
I'm putting that on ice.
Maybe it is mediocre after all.
[woman] No. Don't let your teachers
convince you of that.
Let us know
when the next art academy party is.
And these experts,
are they all happy to commit?
They can't wait.
I don't understand why you're asking me.
Because we need to create artwork here.
Computers can create artwork
and stunning visuals.
Computers are always
so shitty to deal with.
Exactly what we have here on this wall.
"Computers can change your life
for the better."
"Access to information must be free."
But Terravision goes
in the same direction, only far grander.
It's a world accessible
to all of our making.
The interface must be
something built by a sculptor.
And not this Pac-Man shit.
It's essential that contracts be drawn up.
- Yes.
- Can you guarantee
to deliver your project
for the Kyoto conference next year?
We can guarantee it.
Are you certain of that?
[chuckles softly]
Yeah.
Mm?
Hmm.
My congratulations.
- Congratulations.
- Thank you.
Thank you very much.
What have you called this idea?
Does it have a name?
Yeah, of course.
Terra.
Vision.
Terravision. Okay.
[both laughing]
Terravision. Is it?
- It sounds good.
- Yeah.
And what kind of computer
will it be built on?
An Onyx with RealityEngine.
No one in Germany
has an Onyx with RealityEngine.
We do. From Deutsche Telekom.
I'll be onboard.
And I will.
[Carsten] And you are
the most talented sculptor I know.
[chuckles shyly]
What I want to know is whether
we can use a small part of the budget
for other experimental things.
You okay with that?
- What kind of other things, though?
- Well, like synthetic drugs, for example.
[chuckles uncomfortably]
- Yeah, maybe. We'll see.
- Fine, I'll be involved then.
[chuckles]
- Mm?
- [grunts softly]
[techno music playing]
- Our office.
- [both chuckle]
This is awesome.
- [Eric] You gave your guarantee?
- We gave our guarantee, yeah.
Even though you had no idea if in
that time frame, you could get it done?
No one had tried anything like this.
We didn't know. Nobody could have known.
Herr Müller, I was asking you
something that was quite different.
At that point, Deutsche Telekom
agreed to finance your project,
under the condition that it was finished
before, I believe, one year later.
At that point,
were you aware it was impossible,
that there was no way you could deliver?
I'm not sure I understand
the direction of your questioning.
It's very simple. I'd like to know
if the project was falsely endorsed
under unachievable guarantees.
Herr Müller, did you lie
to Deutsche Telekom deliberately?
I don't believe
Deutsche Telekom were lied to.
We believed we had a chance to succeed.
And now we had the technical means
to set it in motion.
Thanks to Deutsche Telekom,
we were able to purchase
the Onyx with RealityEngine.
Two penniless students
Brian Anderson.
suddenly had
the highest performance computer
in the world at hand.
In a block on Breitscheidplatz,
right next to the Memorial Church.
Also, then it wasn't just
the two of us anymore.
There was a team of us
to make sure it would happen.
[pop music playing]
Christine. Ines. Alex.
You're in charge of the maps.
Satellite images, geodata, aerial images,
everything, of every place, in any format.
The important thing is
that we need satellite views
of every place on Earth
from different heights.
Thirty thousand metres,
15,000 metres, 1000 metres,
500 metres, 100 metres.
Anything you can get your hands on.
Otherwise, the flight effect
towards Earth won't work.
Those millions of satellite maps
need to be digitised.
And we need a huge database
so we can store and manage the maps.
This is what Frankie and Dos
will be coding.
Bernd
- and Schmölders
- Yes, here.
are fellow students at the UDK,
and will be taking care of the interface.
How do we operate Terravision?
How do we navigate the flight
from space to Earth?
How do we interact with the computer?
What kind of screen will we use?
And Juri has the easiest job.
He has to come up with an algorithm
to make all of this possible,
to access and process
all these satellite maps in real time.
Something nobody has thought of before.
But seriously, though,
we know that's the hardest part of all.
Juri's program
will be the core of Terravision.
And for now, nobody knows
if writing that program is even possible.
But without that core,
there will be no Terravision.
So your team
was a group of artists and hackers
who had never worked together before.
And a project as big as this
was certainly not something
they had any experience with.
Is that right?
- I'd say not
- [Eric] You would say not, Herr Müller.
I would say that back then, none of us
had been in proper work up to that point.
Which of you has a bank account?
Uh, me.
Schmölders, you've got an account?
I'm Swabian.
- [all chuckling]
- Okay, man, then you're our bookkeeper.
Oh I mean, no, no,
I'm a performance artist.
But you're a Swabian
and have a bank account.
That makes you more of an accountant
than anyone else here.
- Please give a warm round of applause.
- No, no.
for our bookkeeper, yeah?
[clapping, chuckling]
- Yeah. All right, kiss my ass.
- From now, the clock is ticking.
Even though some things
didn't work the first time
The satellite, the images, for example.
Obviously, we wanted
to obtain the satellite maps legally.
Deutsche Telekom
was our employer after all.
But after three months of phone calls
and begging and whatever else,
it became clear that we would never manage
to cover the whole world,
especially not in different resolutions.
That's all that we can get.
You mean that's all
they were willing to offer us?
[Hauswirth] So what did you do?
Well, what does a hacker do
at that moment? Hmm?
[Carsten]
Wow. How did you get them so fast?
Uh, how come
they say "NASA" all over them?
[all] Whoops.
[techno music playing]
Carsten. This is the first private company
website in Germany. [laughing]
And these here
Those are secured for us as well.
Telekom.de.
Telekom.com.
Miele.de.
Mercedes-Benz.de.
Hey, could you secure for me
Porno. de as well?
[all laughing]
What? What?
It's the future of the Internet, man!
Hey, hey, hey. Here.
Look, this is what I found
[Carsten] Even Bernd was almost euphoric,
by his standards anyway.
- Our enthusiasm had infected him.
- Great. Yes.
[Carsten] Yeah, he had
a real creative burst, it's fair to say.
It's all really useful.
But it didn't last too long.
Finding a control system
that was functional for the computer
and still looked like art
to the rest of the world?
That seemed impossible for him.
But it didn't matter.
Do you understand?
Obviously, whether we had
an interface or not,
or whether the satellite pictures
we had were correct
we had this fundamental, naive conviction
that all of it eventually would function.
Kyoto still seemed so far off.
[techno music playing]
Dos?
[yelps]
You swine!
[laughing]
Even Schmölders, who'd for a long time
fought against his fate,
at some indeterminable point, realised
he could no longer deny his calling.
Easy, easy. Let me pay the man.
I really need a receipt for this.
- Please.
- Yeah, yeah.
And it wasn't a bathtub
filled with fake blood,
or the performance art, no, no.
It was accounts after all.
Schmölders was born for bookkeeping.
I can't bill this to Deutsche Telekom.
I can't do it.
[sighs] It was a work meeting.
A work meeting?
Eighty-five schnapps and a little salad?
[chuckles]
Hey, got yourself a folder, I see.
Yeah, I Of course.
I need to stay a little organised.
- It's
- No. I think it's great.
Made it his living. And very successfully.
Seriously, it's really good.
Kiss my asshole.
Come on, Schmölders.
Looking back, you tend
to romanticise things a bit,
but still I honestly think
yeah, up until New Year's Eve, '93.
- Yeah.
- [fireworks booming]
I'd say we had the best time
of our lives up until that point.
[rock music playing]
[man] Yeah!
- So?
- So?
[man] Yeah!
And? How's things working out
in your Space Invaders world?
[laughs] My Space Invaders world?
[man] Hey, come here!
Man, you have no idea.
This will be the greatest thing
ever to come out
- of the University of Arts.
- Why?
I'll stuff it down my professors' throats.
You'll see.
Wow. It's about hurt feelings?
All about your wounded pride, is it?
No. It's not about that.
Oh, yeah, no, yeah. Okay.
Maybe just a little bit.
Come with me.
Look, I know that you're not 1,000%
convinced about the whole thing,
but we could really use some extra help
from someone
with good taste and intelligence
and with a feel
for the big picture, and I'm
Come on, let's dance.
[Juri] At that time,
none of the others knew
that I was completely overwhelmed
with my task.
I hadn't even told Carsten yet
because every day,
I still hoped that I would manage
to find the solution.
But I was running out of time,
and while everyone had their fun
and did their own part,
I was racking my brains
on how to bring this all together.
There was nothing to fall back on.
It hadn't been done before.
In the early '90s,
this was uncharted territory.
[party clamour continues]
We have a list of renowned
computer experts and consultants
and they were all asked the same question,
whether your enterprise, hmm, in 1993
was even feasible in light
of the technology available at that time.
Humour me, Herr Müller.
How many experts said it was possible?
It hadn't been done before.
There was no precedent.
You were trying to find
the solution for a problem
for something no one knew whether
there was a solution for as of yet.
Exactly. With that in mind,
I'd say very few experts
would have said it was possible then.
Not a single one.
See, business lunch, right?
Lunch break! Whoo!
[woman] Oh, yes.
- Yeah? Herb specials?
- Yeah.
- Yogurt sauce.
- [man] No onions?
That's the one without onions.
And extra hot for Juri.
Enjoy!
- Enjoy!
- Enjoy!
- Yum.
- Cheers.
Oh, yeah.
[man] I love kebabs.
Hey, here it was.
Less than a year ago.
Now we're doing it. Incredible, right?
[chuckling]
Come with me.
What is it?
We have a problem.
I-I must show you something. Only you.
Okay.
What's causing this?
Here.
This. This is the amount of data
that does fit in our working memory.
And this.
This is the amount of data we need
to fit in our working memory.
The list alone of our satellite maps is
bigger than our entire storage capacity.
But here I know what the problem is.
We've got another one.
A much bigger one.
Whenever I fly closer to the Earth,
these earthquakes happen.
Somewhere in my algorithm
there is a conceptual mistake,
and I have no idea where it is
or how to resolve it.
[sighs]
I'm I'm really worried. I
I'll be honest. I'm shitting my pants
that I might not be able to.
I
I'm starting to think
it's too complex for me.
I can't sleep anymore.
[Eric] You assured Deutsche Telekom
that you could deliver for Kyoto.
As your employer,
did they know about your issues?
Deutsche Telekom invested well over
a million deutsche mark in your project.
Were they even aware
of your problem or informed?
At that point, had they even seen
anything of Terravision?
Klaus, I know what I said.
It's going great.
I wish you could see for yourself.
[Eric] Herr Müller, I must remind you
that you're speaking under oath.
- No.
- [Eric] No, what?
Please use full sentences.
No, Deutsche Telekom
knew nothing of our problems.
And Deutsche Telekom,
had they even at that point
been shown any of your work at all?
No.
[Eric] You had two months left until Kyoto
and you hadn't shown anything
to Deutsche Telekom?
That's right.
[Carsten]
Because we only want to show you when
when we're 100% happy with it.
Mm-hm.
One week.
Thank you, Klaus. Ciao.
[whispers] One week.
[Eric] You must have known
that you would have
to show something eventually.
It was clear we couldn't avoid
showing them any longer.
So, week after week,
we prayed that it would finally work.
That we had finally
eliminated all the bugs.
[computer beeps]
[beeps]
Fuck!
[Schmölders]
Shit, Juri! Why is it still so crap?
[Carsten] In five days,
Deutsche Telekom will be at our door.
Can't you stop them coming?
We can't push back again, Juri.
I just can't do it.
- They want to see something now.
- I don't know what's wrong with it.
And five days won't be enough
to figure it out.
[Carsten]
Our hands are tied, we signed a contract.
[Schmölders]
One year down the drain, then. Thanks.
A debt of 2 million deutsche mark.
[sighs deeply]
At that point,
we all practically lived in the office.
We were all frankly overworked, and
Yeah, the atmosphere was undeniably tense.
Hey, guys! What the hell is this shit
in here? Why was it in the greenhouse?
Were you hiding this?
Let's be realistic,
we were all a little mad.
[pounds desk]
We didn't hide anything from you.
You've become paranoid!
Because I'm trying to do
the fucking accounting here.
But I can't do that
if you all throw your fucking receipts
in some random laundry basket!
Nobody gives a shit
about the fucking receipts.
And why do you think that would happen?
Because we are here, busy trying
to get this fucking shit programme
to work once and for all!
Well, get the shit programme
to work for Kyoto,
or Deutsche Telekom
won't pay the last instalments.
And we'll be here with one foot
in bankruptcy and the other in jail.
- The programme needs to work before Kyoto.
- We've still got their domain names.
- [Christine] Yeah!
- [Carsten] It was only a question of time
- before things boiled over.
- Calm down.
And, uh
well that was what happened in the end.
[shouting]
[Eric] At that moment,
did you personally believe
that you could finish Terravision
for the Kyoto conference?
[sombre music playing]
[Eric] Herr Müller?
At that moment, did you personally believe
that you could finish Terravision
for the Kyoto conference?
[panting]
No.
[typing]
[crowd shouting]
[heartbeat thumping]
[shouting continues]
[typing frantically]
[whistle blows]
[man] Juri!
[doctor]
Is he under an unusual amount of stress?
- Or pressure?
- [Carsten] Why?
His readings aren't good
and he's barely responsive.
I'd say it might be what we call
a hyperventilation syndrome, thus far.
He must take it seriously.
If it happens often,
it could be a sign of an anxiety disorder.
And then he'd need
proper medical attention.
- Does he have relatives in Berlin?
- They live in Hungary.
Mm. In any case,
I'm keeping him here overnight.
[video game beeping]
[indistinct chatter in background]
[Juri] Earlier, at the office,
it was as if my spirit
was leaving my body
and I was watching myself die
from the outside.
But I've never had it that bad before.
Wait. This wasn't the first time?
Juri, you really need
to have some treatment for this.
I'll quit if you want.
You'll find someone who can do it.
No. No one's better than you.
I can't do it.
It's fine, you know.
Okay, it's not completely fine,
but you know
What I mean is, I would never blame you
if you failed to achieve it.
And the others wouldn't.
None of us would.
Yeah.
Too many fucking leaves and branches.
Too many fucking leaves and branches.
Juri, Juri, Juri, you can't do that.
[grunting]
Yeah.
Shit!
Yeah. The same but smaller.
It's all a matter of perspective.
Say that once more.
[Carsten chuckles] What?
Say that once more, what you just said.
Yeah, sure. So, yeah, from another
perspective, it's just a normal flower.
From the perspective of an ant,
it means the tree is completely massive.
Yeah.
Jur Juri.
Juri, just wait there.
Hey. What's the matter with you?
I've worked out where the earthquakes come
from. It's so obvious. I must go back.
No.
Fine.
I'll get your stuff. You wait right here.
Okay, from the beginning.
Earth is always our starting point:
the view from outer space of the Earth.
This is our first satellite picture,
the map that every Terravision user
will see first.
[Carsten] Of course.
And then as we gradually fly
towards Earth,
we simply subdivide each map
into four maps, each 128-by-128 pixels.
So it becomes a quad tree.
That way, we can get the right resolution
and be fast enough for the texture memory.
Every satellite picture we need
will be stored in this upside-down tree.
Every path through the tree
is directly assigned to a map.
The search algorithm is at the same time
the code of the tree's branches.
The code of the tree's branches
is the search algorithm.
The problem I hadn't seen until now is
was the humble ant.
By locking on to one coordinate system,
the processor of the computer
couldn't display it
as it's in a floating-point number range.
So the processor would freak out
and divide everything by zero.
And that was the earthquake.
The solution is
we must let the coordinate system
be free to fly alone.
[Carsten] Juri had just sliced through
the Gordian knot. That night.
It was his moment of genius.
It was his Columbus' egg.
Taking all these elements,
you know, by speeding up the Onyx,
the quad tree
and the floating coordinate system,
and adding them all together that night.
And for every level,
a new scale is made for each step.
We then have a floating coordinate system.
That is our solution.
[Carsten] Before, each was only a tool,
but he had joined those and discovered
the algorithm for Terravision.
The first algorithm
that allowed free navigation
through an infinitely large
amount of data.
And honestly, even today,
the algorithm works exactly the same way
as the one he imagined back then. Yeah?
When we use navigation systems
or look for the way on our phones,
whatever, same one.
So, finally, you had the solution
to your problems you'd been looking for?
Well, yeah. In theory,
at least, no? [chuckles]
as it was in a floating-point number
and we kept locking on to one coordinate
[Schmölders] Hey. What's going on?
Looks like Juri's found a solution
to our earthquake problem.
It's all here, on the wall.
He calls it
a "floating coordinate system."
- And what about Deutsche Telekom?
- Coming in five hours, yeah.
[Schmölders] Can you manage
to programme it before that?
There's no way.
See, when you try to add to something
like that that's already been built
you must, in the shortest time, take
thousands of code and rewrite them all,
and it's not about getting it
90% right, not even 99%.
No, it has to be 100% right.
And if by chance, there is somewhere,
where two routines happen to try to gain
access to the processor at the same time,
then the system will crash, of course.
[Christine]
What if we tell them the truth?
That it's not yet functioning,
but Juri has a solution in hand.
We can't.
Why not?
[Carsten] For months, I've been
telling them that everything's perfect.
That only some touch-ups need to be made.
I cannot tell them the truth now.
- But you see what I'm saying, right?
- We are so sorry.
- The train had a problem.
- State-owned infrastructures, I mean.
Yeah, I'm just glad
you managed to come over.
- Klaus.
- Carsten. Helga.
- Hello.
- Hello.
Hello.
[Breuer] We got you a little something.
There was nothing better
that we could think of.
Instead of flowers.
- Here.
- [Carsten] Thank you.
- Oh, how eccentric.
- This is Bernd.
- Yes, hello. Hello.
- Hello.
Our satellite charts.
[woman] Nice to meet you.
All we have to do now
is decide where to go first.
Where should we go?
- Hmm.
- Uh
Okay, how about right here
on Breitscheidplatz?
- Yeah.
- Yeah. Yes.
- [Carsten] Yeah? Okay.
- Okay.
[Carsten] First stop: Breitscheidplatz.
[typing]
Unbelievable.
[Carsten] We can't tell them the truth,
otherwise they'll pull the plug.
We know that.
Shit.
We must tell another version.
Where do you live, Klaus?
- Um, Clayallee.
- Clayallee?
- That's a gorgeous area.
- It is.
How about that's where we fly to?
- Yes.
- [Carsten] Why not?
- Off to Clayallee.
- [Breuer] Oh!
[Carsten] When our truth won't do,
we need to feed them another truth.
An alternative reality, that version.
- Do you understand?
- Reality distortion field.
Exactly. Star Trek.
What What do you mean, Star Trek?
Yes, which episode?
"Talos IV."
The Talosians
were able to create an alternative reality
just with the power of their mental will.
Helga, I bet you play sports.
Yeah.
- [Carsten] Uh, rowing?
- [Helga] No, tennis.
- What's your club called then?
- VfK 01 in Charlottenburg.
How about going?
- Why not?
- Off to Charlottenburg.
We can't let them choose
where they're flying to,
but they'll think they're doing so.
Deutsche Telekom, Klaus Breuer.
Find out where he lives,
where he was born, where he plays sports.
Hamburg is a good idea. Hamburg?
- Hamburg.
- Hamburg.
[Carsten] These "supposedly"
freely-chosen destinations,
we know them already.
We've prepared them and recorded them.
All that's left is for us to play them.
- Madagascar.
- Africa.
- Provence.
- Provence?
Come on,
I've always wanted to go to Africa.
It last year, I was in Singapore
with my wife. I'd like to go back there.
Klaus, you're really sending us
all across the world.
Yes, it would mean something to her.
I can tell Ute about it later.
Mm.
Yes, I understand.
You know what, Klaus?
I'd say Asia is indeed a stellar idea.
I mean,
where are we all flying to in two weeks?
Kyoto. Kyoto.
- Kyoto.
- Kyoto.
[all chanting] Kyoto! Kyoto! Kyoto!
- Kyoto! Kyoto! Kyoto!
- You're the boss.
All right, Kyoto.
[all cheering]
Yeah. The next time we see each other
will be at the airport, won't it?
It will be. Hmm.
Well, you really gave us
some goose bumps in there.
Yes.
And you can't say that within Deutsche
Telekom's usual agenda, that's number one.
- No, not normally, no.
- [all laughing]
Tschüss.
Klaus.
- It was great.
- Helga, thank you.
- Tschüss!
- Tschüss!
[Helga] Tschüss.
- [Breuer] Yes, that really was fantastic.
- [team cheering]
[laughing]
[Christine] Oh, so good.
Good job.
- You're brilliant.
- That was fantastic.
- I was so nervous.
- So good.
[all laughing, chattering]
Guys! This is it.
A globe.
That's our interface.
That's how we operate.
Terravision.
- Yeah!
- [man] He's the man!
- [rock music playing]
- [all cheering]
- [screaming, shouting]
- [music continues]
[Eric] Did Juri Müller manage
to finish programming the algorithm
before your departure for Kyoto?
No.
[Eric] That means that,
up to that very day,
Terravision hadn't run properly
one single time?
That is correct, yes.
The day our flight left,
North Asia was hit by the worst storm
they'd had in years.
But Juri kept on working relentlessly.
It was like fate was sending us signs.
It seemed like Kyoto
simply didn't want us to arrive at all.
Welcome to Kyoto. My name is Haru.
We are so sorry for this storm.
Please follow me to the conference room.
I don't remember how high our chances
of getting it done in time were.
Juri had said to me they were
infinitely small, that's for sure.
But it was possible.
- The panel will be here soon.
- How are you getting on? Klaus, come on.
- Christine, Juri, does it work?
- Almost. We're close.
Okay, you've got 30 seconds, yeah?
And now?
Okay. Super.
[Carsten] At the very last second,
he managed to have
Terravision up and running.
- It's working.
- Are you sure?
Yeah.
It's live.
[Carsten] But as soon as one problem
was solved, another one came our way.
- Yeah.
- [announcer] Hello, Kyoto.
Live from San Francisco, the M People!
[Carsten] Just across from us,
the American telecommunications giant AT&
had an enormous display wall
consisting of parallel-connected screens,
which had never been seen before.
They had laid
a transoceanic fibre-optic cable,
especially for the event,
to stream a live concert
all the way from California.
That's as state-of-the-art
as it got back then.
[crowd cheering over screens]
["Moving On Up" playing over screens]
Movin' on up
Movin' on up ♪
Movin' on up ♪
Nothin' can stop me ♪
Movin' on up ♪
Compared to them, we were like a couple
of students with a science fair project.
[song continues]
[speaking Japanese]
Hello.
Here, you can turn.
Turn.
[Bernd] Like this. Yeah, turn.
Yeah. You see?
Do it.
[speaking Japanese]
- Japan. Japan.
- Yeah.
Nippon, Nippon.
Yeah. Move in.
- Do it. Carefully? Okay.
- [man] Okay.
[speaking Japanese]
My hometown.
[speaking Japanese]
House I was born.
[pleasant music playing]
[gasps]
Sato, Sato.
[speaking Japanese]
[Hauswirth] And what happened then?
And it all exploded.
Everyone really
Everyone that day at the conference
wanted to visit their hometown after that.
[indistinct chatter]
I can see the world. Wow.
Wow!
Okay, wait for this.
I just heard the U.S. Secretary of State
wanted to check out our stand.
Holy shit! [gasps]
[all chuckling]
Such a pleasure. Pleased to meet you.
This is my colleague, Helga Passow.
- [Hauswirth] And what year was that?
- [Carsten] 1994.
And when did Google release Google Earth?
- So 11 years later?
- [Carsten] That's right.
[Hauswirth] You've brought us a video?
- [Carsten] Yes.
- [Hauswirth] What'll we see in this video?
A flight into Breitscheidplatz,
and finishing at our old office building.
Left, we have Terravision,
Google Earth on the right.
- The Google Earth we all know?
- The same version used back then.
And that for everyone
was a sensation, wasn't it?
[Hauswirth] Please show the demo.
[Carsten]
This was also the version that included
the basics for all our navigation systems,
for geo-based sales systems.
All of which Google needs to operate,
and things which half the world
is now unable to live without.
With which Google has earned fortunes
to this day and continues to do so.
[Eric] There is no evidence
that Google has earned any money
with Google Earth.
It's about their invention,
your algorithm.
No evidence and it can't be proven.
Are you serious? It is right there!
How can Terravision and Google Earth
be so absolutely identical, then?
Because we were naive then.
An unbelievable error
was made at that time.
[ominous music playing]
[downtempo music playing]
Subtitle translation by
Michele Jochem Yunus