Tech.Seattle.Com -- Technoid: David Justin Ross

Increasingly, the culture of high-tech permeates the Northwest lifestyle - with a lifestyle of its own. More than many others, these new industrialists rise early, work hard, come home late. They play differently - often late at night, live differently. The good ones know who all the other goods ones are. In a fluid field, they are equally fluid job travelers. They're not sure anyone knows them, really. Like other groups, they have been given a stereotype of their own.

Who are they? Here and on subsequent pages, we profile four of them.

Is Seattle the 21st-century Silicon Valley? David Justin Ross thinks so - and he could well be right. For one thing, Ross was part of the Silicon heyday. For another, he really is a rocket scientist.

Like many who work in technology, Ross arrived in Seattle down a winding road. He's the chief executive officer of a Redmond start-up company. But that's where one's preconceptions need to stop.

On his wide and overflowing desk, for instance, lies a well-thumbed, heavily bookmarked Bible. Next to it are stacks of printed lectures Ross has given ("Seven Paths To Immortality," "Tom Swift, The Hardy Boys and the End of Western Civilization," "Human Uploading: What It Means and How to Do It").

On his bookshelves is the same sort of variety, from "Systematic Theology" to Tom Clancy; "God and the New Physics" to "Gravitation." On the vast white board that makes up one wall, between the symbols, acronyms and diagrams, is a childish drawing marked: "DAD, I love you! DO NOT ERACE!"

Ross is a co-founder of two companies, Arkenstone (a nonprofit based in Sunnyvale, Calif.) and RAF Technologies in Redmond. Arkenstone makes reading and workplace aids for the blind. It is run by Jim Fruchterman, a close friend of Ross and the silent partner in RAF.

RAF traffics in several things. One is "OCR," optical character recognition. It designs customized programs by which computers "read"- things like mail, claims and forms.

Other RAF programs enable machines to decode other things: handprints, bar codes, multiple-choice quizzes.

New views, new future

The way Ross talks, works and lives symbolizes much about how our culture is changing. He's proactive; he believes in making his future. In a recent talk he called "The Age of Magic," Ross discussed two ways to predict the future.

One way, he noted, is to look at trends. "This basically says the near future will be like the recent past, only more so." The other way is to invert the problem: "Saying I'm not going to worry about how; I'm gonna focus on what people want. Assume technology will evolve to meet desire."

This might indicate an early dose of Robert Heinlein, coupled with the boys' adventure literature in which he's an expert (everyone remembers Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer; how many remember "Tom Sawyer: Aeronaut"?). Except that, for Ross, the future isn't speculation. It may be adventure - but it's real.

Religion and rocket science

Ross was born in New Orleans and raised in New York and got his undergraduate degree in physics from Yale. While at college, an agnostic Ross became a Christian ("one of the few to do so for purely intellectual reasons").

He believes Christianity "makes sense internally and, in terms of axioms verified, does indeed connect to the real world." Ross gives talks about the basis of his faith but he is not too picky about church-going. He says he will attend any denomination and refers to his Redmond church as "another start-up."

In 1971, with a draft number of 12, Ross joined the Navy to avoid a stint in the Army. Once free, he was soon in graduate school, an aspiring aerospace engineer at Stanford. In autumn 1976, Ross received his master's degree and entered a doctoral program in aeronautics.

His first summer job was at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. There, at long last, he could live the future."I had this wonderful life! I worked on Galileo! I even put together my own Ph.D. program, which was all about how to mine the moon."

Ross worked at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., dealing primarily in orbital mechanics. Then at a drunken Christmas party, he was approached by a man named Gary Hudson. Hudson said he was starting a rocket company.

He had already hired another student, Ross's friend Jim Fruchterman. And he had just two "job-interview" questions. Says Ross, "He asked who was my favorite science-fiction writer - it was Paul Anderson - and my favorite SF character, who was Nicholas van Rijn. I was on the money: they were his favorites, too."

So began a new career at GHC Inc., which was based in Sunnyvale, Calif. By 1981, Hudson had his rocket. And on Aug. 5, in Texas, Ross pushed its firing button.

"The wheels started spinning, those valves opened up and for 112 seconds there, it burned," he laughs. Then the rocket blew up in a million pieces - forming first a mushroom cloud, then a fireball. "All, of course, on prime-time television."

Exit Ross and Fruchterman with extreme haste. "We knew what the culprit was: the Texas humidity. So we flew the company plane to the Bahamas and sat around thinking: What are we gonna do? Obviously, it wasn't gonna be rockets."

Character tackles characters

Back at Stanford, the duo met Dr. Eric Hannah. "He had this idea - a machine to read anything. He asked me to write algorithms which would recognize characters."

"Being young and naive, I said, `Of course.' It seems like a long step from rockets, but it's similar. Similar in kind, that is, but not degree."

So in 1982, in Santa Clara, Calif., Hannah, Ross and Fruchterman launched a company called Palantir. When another company turned up with the same name, they called a dinner conference - and renamed their firm after the wine they drank. As Calera Recognition Systems, they ate up the field, merging 18 months later with Caere, the market leader.

Ross, however, soon grew restless. He wanted a year off but settled for time "inventing." For this, he relocated to Boise, Idaho - a town he and his wife, Heidi, found idyllic. By this time, the Rosses had three young children: James, Katie and Robert (now 9, 6 and 4). It was Idaho that led them to Seattle.

At the memory of Boise, Ross leans back in his chair. "They had no Thai restaurant, so we just couldn't stay. I mean that - but there's a little more to it. I was starting two more companies (Arkenstone and RAF Technologies). And no way could I hire people to Boise!"

So, in May 1991, the Ross family moved to Seattle.

"The reason to be in Seattle," he says, "is the reason I was in Silicon Valley 15 years ago. Which is to say there's strong infrastructure here. There are lawyers who can understand small, high-tech companies; there are landlords here who are quite prepared to cut you slack. And there's lots of talent for a hiring base."

How Ross hires is certainly a Silicon legacy - but it's one of learning from the mistakes of others.

"In Silicon Valley, when I was at Calera, we hired this professional CEO, who I liked a lot. But I got into a fight with him about giving stock and raises to employees. He thought, `The Valley's in recession, where can they possibly go?' I thought, `These people are the best. They can go anywhere.' "

It's common for high-tech "talent" to get stock options. But Ross feels consideration must go further. He believes in help for repetitive-strain injuries, 401K plans and office martial-arts programs. "Our programmers know exactly what is going on. They know every contract that we pitch for. And they know how every one of them is going."

New world, new strategies

Like most of those in similar start-ups, Ross scours different disciplines for creativity. A high level of technical skill is always a given; it means applicants can learn the company programs. What they can't be taught is the right attitude: Silicon Seattle's ultimate in-demand quality.

"When I hire, I'm after that single trait. I want the person who's in charge of the world around them. Because, business-wise, nerd-dom is dangerous. People who know nothing of the arts are dangerous. People who don't read are dangerous. They are far too inwardly directed."

It is easy to see why quality of life is important to Ross. But he will admit his world is different - and not just from that of the neighbors in Boise. It is also different from the world his dad predicted.

"Our personal contacts outside the company here - they boil down to family and church," he says. "This is not the world our parents and fathers knew. There are no merchants associations or country clubs. People don't join the Masons or the Elks. No one makes their business deals out on a golf course."

Ross sees this as Silicon Valley updated. "People who ran things there were individualists. And the culture which evolved is similar. It has a shoot-from-the-hip, take-responsibility viewpoint."

After years of thinking on the future, both in fiction and function, Ross can see Seattle inhabits a crossroads. Some other eyes see it; many, he knows, refuse to. His own father hates automatic teller machines ("and it's not incompetence; it's just a phobia").

But Ross knows that change is unstoppable, and he is concerned about its reach. "There are lots of issues which go beyond the technical - issues that are moral, that are ethical, that are lifestyle. Many of those touch on our civil liberties. We have not begun to see the impact.

"And if people don't want to get involved, or at least to educate themselves, they can't make a rational choice on any such issue."

"Everyone doesn't need to program computers. But everyone does need to operate one. Computer-phobic people will fall behind." Ross looks sideways out his scenic window. "As we always used to say in the rocket biz, `The meek may inherit the Earth, but we'll get the stars.' "