What a great story. There is the breath of ancient drama in it, the high tension of the digital present and that also in the wonderfully long-hangover milieu of the Berlin subcultures from the end of the 20th century. An artist and a hacker develop one of the algorithms in the underground techno clubs, art academies and the Chaos Computer Club that still determine everyday life in the world today. Google steals it and there is a lawsuit. The miniseries The Billion Dollar Code is about. And if you have this story told by Axel Schmidt, one of the two real people who the script turns into the main role of the hacker Juri (played by Marius Ahrendt), you can only be amazed at how relaxed the man is.
After all, he is the inventor of the “quadtree”. This is a so-called tree structure with which one can sort computing processes in computer science, the exact function of which would overstrain the layman’s understanding of a journalist and the flow of reading a newspaper article. The trade journal for programmers Dr. Dobb’s Journal at least once called this structure the “algorithm to condense space and time”, which sounds almost historical. During the development of the Terra Vision program, from the The Billion Dollar Code told, this is the solution to get the computer to simulate without interference that the user flies from space onto a globe made of stored satellite maps very close to individual buildings. Anyone who sighs that it is very banal, that every cell phone can do that, has already hit the point.
With the help of Telekom, an art project became software that is now in every navigation system
These quadtrees are now the basis for all GPS-based programs, for navigation systems, for geo-based shopping sites and, of course, for Google Earth, says Axel Schmidt. You can still hear his origins from the Berlin years in the speech melody. He also wears a programmer ponytail in proper style. The story of the idea claw is as brazen as it is exemplary. The artist Carsten (Leonard Schleicher) and the hacker Juri use money from the investment pots that Deutsche Telekom invested in Berlin to transform an art project into functioning software. It is called “Terra Vision”. With the help of a globe as a control device, you can perform all the functions that are so natural today and that were a sensation back then. That is why they establish her company Art + Comthat still exist in Berlin today.
Because Terra Vision at that time only ran on high-performance computers from Silicon Graphics, which mainly produced special effects for Hollywood, the Terra Vision team soon ended up in Silicon Valley. In the series, the contrast between the gloomy Berlin office floors and techno clubs and the light-flooded Californian campus and a psychedelic festival in the desert couldn’t be greater. Carsten and Juri meet the programmer Brian Anderson, who is like a superhero to them and who, according to Schmidt, was called Michael T. Jones in real life. Juri explains the main features of the program to him. “That’s exactly what my bosses always wanted from me,” he says with envious admiration. As a top IT specialist, he doesn’t even have to see the code to recreate it. He first founds his own company, then Google recruits him. It was the same in real life.
Very few startups can afford lawsuits against the tech giants
The betrayal of the alleged friend in California then leads to a dispute between Juri and Carsten (also a mixed figure from the artists Joachim Sauter and Gerd Grüneis). The story is still exciting enough if you already know the end, because otherwise the series largely sticks to historical facts. Art + Com loses the process. The story is also exemplary because the companies from Silicon Valley, whether Google, Facebook or Apple, have been doing this for a long time. Good ideas are either bought, stolen or sued for failure. Very few startups can afford the seven- to eight-figure sums that such patent and copyright litigation costs. If they do step into the legal ring, they rarely win. The computer scientist David Gelernter from Yale University sued the Apple company eleven years ago because it implemented his ideas in applications such as Spotlight, Cover Flow and Time Machine. A court awarded him 625 million dollars. That was much less in the appeal due to procedural errors. But the number makes it clear what such ideas are worth, even if the whole algorithm is not stolen.
The series has four episodes. It suffers a little from technical defects. Timing and rhythm are a bit wooden. The actors play so hard as if they had to convince a theater of their characters. Some of the details look badly constructed. Especially in the first two episodes, the characters wear retro hairstyles that look like wigs from a carnival store. The story also carries the four episodes on its own. Precisely because the gap in the balance of power is becoming so clear, which is growing more and more at a time when the digital corporations Facebook, Apple and Google are increasingly finding themselves in court or before parliamentary investigative committees.
At that time, Axel Schmidt clearly recognized his work and his handwriting in Google Earth. At that time, he and his team developed a method of viewing at least parts of the Google Earth source code. There were whole set pieces from the source code of Terra Vision.
But you don’t have to worry about the pioneers from back then. Axel Schmidt, for example, always remained active in digital cartography. In 2000 he started Gate 5, which Nokia bought for an undisclosed amount six years later. He then helped set up the company Here Technologies, which belongs to a consortium of Audi, BMW and Daimler and has 30 offices on three continents. Meanwhile, Sauter and Grüneis continued to run Art + Com, today one of the world’s leading design offices for installations and art projects. Her work can be seen from the Futurium in Berlin and the BMW World to Singapore Airport and the Dubai Mall. Life meant well to him, says Axel Schmidt. Except Google.
The Billion Dollar Code, on Netflix.