- After their success at the Kyoto conference and a trip to Silicon Valley, Carsten and Juri return to Berlin and start seeking investors for the company.
- 2 years before the trial, Carsten has found a law firm to sue Google. Lea Hausiwth is the lawyer from Houston, Windmill and Keen assigned to the case. Carsten and Juri are no longer talking, so Lea approaches Juri in Budapest to convince him to join the trial. Juri says that the inventor of Facebook only got $50 million but were not recognized as the inventors. In the internet world, the strong prey on the weak and that's how it is. Lea was the lawyer in the 2012 lawsuit between Samsung an Apple. Apple has no copyrights to the iPad design and Samsung won the case. Juri agrees on 2 conditions, no collaboration with Carsten and no hidden monetary agreements with Google.
After their massive success and media attention, Carsten Schlüter and Juri Müller were reached out to by one of the chiefs at Silicon Graphics, Brian Anderson. Media had dubbed Terravision "The God Machine". They had already toured the world with their installation for over a year. They were awarded the 50 most important inventions of the digital era. To develop Terravision, the German innovators used an Onyx workstation designed by Silicon Graphics. Silicon Graphics was the leading graphics company at the time. Onyx has made Jurassic Park and Terminator 2 possible. Brian adored Terravision and thus invited Carsten and Juri to display it at the company's showroom in California, 1995. Carsten was awestruck at the company office. They had hardware worth hundreds of millions of dollars just lying around. They had people walking around with laundry buckets full of cash. This was the future. But Carsten still thought of Terravision as his college project, and just wanted to roam the world, demonstrating it. He did not have a vision for it.
Juri worshiped computer god Brian and thus, on his short three-day trip, discussed Terravision's algorithm with him. Juri wanted to make his invention available to the general public on the internet, and Brian understood his ambitions. Juri wanted to add content to the images. Content like street names, addresses, names of places and businesses and offices and so on. Juri's vision went further to create a virtual reality version of those places that people could visit and interact with, book a table at a restaurant, see a menu, buy something at a shop, and so on. The data would reside on servers and the people would access it via the internet. These were all revolutionary ideas for the time. Brian is impressed and asks Juri and Carsten to convert Terra Vision into a company.
However, at the time, the internet was not yet famous, and not many people owned a PC. Brian invites Juri and Carsten to a desert event of technological nerds. Juri and Brian play a game of pong and Juri beats Brian. It is evident that they are soulmates. Hence, Juri decided to stay back in Silicon Valley and give wings to his desire to develop Terravision further. Brian had offered Juri a job at Silicon Graphics. But Carsten aspired to create his own company and their own Silicon Valley in Berlin. He insisted Juri return to Berlin with him and Juri agreed. Juri reasoned that everything that Carsten had said had come true so far. So, Juri believed in Carsten and came back to Berlin.
After returning from America, Carsten established his own company, Art+Com. A symbolization that explains Carsten's vision of uniting art and technology. Carsten models the entire office on Silicon Valley standards. He even gets an espresso machine just like the one Silicon Graphics had. They need 5 to 7 million Deutsche Marks to complete a project to run Terra Vision program from a CD ROM. He explains the concept of venture capital to Deutsche Telekom, but they are not enthused that Carsten wants to bring in many investors. Carsten is in a "Steve Jobs" phase and has even started wearing sneakers. He meets his future wife Julia, who is an artist. However, after an extensive hustle, Carsten and Juri failed to convince their country's investors to understand their vision of an upcoming digital age. They pitch the applications of their software to airlines, travel companies, real estate companies and so on. The companies don't want a business idea to invest in, they want a running program that they can buy. Carsten and Juri were too soon and in the wrong country. The money runs out eventually and one by one the team members start leaving the company. Juri blames Carsten for running his life. As a result, Terravision was never released or re-programmed for the general public.
But then the internet revolution hits Germany in late 1990's and early 2000's and now everybody in Germany wants an internet connection. The internet-based start-ups mushroomed in Berlin. All of Carsten ideas were implemented by companies, just as he had predicted it. There is renewed interest in Terravision. But then the bombshell dropped.
In 2005, Brian developed a demo program that looked precisely like Terravision. He collaborated with another tech company called Google to develop a PC program for the general audience, something Juri always wanted to do. After the big revelations, Juri couldn't believe that his God could steal his life's work. He was in denial and refused to believe that Brian used Terravision's algorithm. Yet, Juri knew that it was only Brian with whom he discussed the intricate details of the software on his short trip to Silicon Valley.
Carsten believed it wasn't an error but a human mistake that couldn't be proved. But Brian's reaction and enthusiasm had a completely different story to tell.
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