MOVIE INDUSTRY SADLY TRIVIALIZES COMPUTER GRAPHICS : LOCAL VIEW.

Byline: David Peltz

``COMPUTER firms turn from guns to films, video'' by Michael White (Daily News, Business, Aug. 8) gleefully tells us that the entertainment industry is reaping huge benefits from computer-graphics technology that was originally developed for and funded by the now nearly defunct American defense and research communities.

White would have us believe it is a good thing that computer-graphics companies now sell to Hollywood and no longer depend on what he called ``narrow military and medical applications.'' As a 31-year veteran of the computer-graphics industry, one of only about 400, I am saddened. What a myopic view White presents.

Computer graphics began in the 1950s as a curiosity. At that time it was a high-cost cure for which there was no known disease. But it soon began to find useful application in breakthrough defense and research projects. They alone had the major funding necessary to explore its use.

Driven by lower-cost hardware and new software, both developed as a direct result of research by the defense community in the 1960s, '70s and '80s, computer graphics became a feasible tool that gave American engineers and scientists a huge competitive edge over their counterparts in other parts of the world. It allowed the United States to develop the world's best airplanes and automobiles. It helped land an American on the moon. It gave us all a plethora of life-saving medical marvels such as equipment for computerized axial tomography (CAT) scanning.

I consider myself very fortunate to have actually lived and been a part of all that history.

But now, according to what White happily reports he saw at the huge Siggraph '97 convention in Los Angeles, computer graphics today is nothing more than a high-tech toy and a theatrical plaything.

Unfortunately, in this 1990s role, computer graphics does absolutely nothing to preserve the security of this - or any other - nation, maintain or improve the health of any of our citizens, or keep alive America's once-proud heritage as the world leader both in computer technology and preserving world peace.

What a shame, and what a waste.

As a typical 1990s person, White obviously prefers theatrical and cyberspace fantasy and entertainment to the more serious business of staying alive if any unexpected hostility should occur. He and too many others like him falsely think there are no more potentially harmful armies or threats of war left anywhere on our ``totally peaceful'' 1990s planet. Or, are there?

White misses the point completely. Were it not for all those well-funded, technology-creating, military projects way back then, we'd most certainly not now have any of the hardware and software which ended up being used in ``Terminator II,'' ``Jurassic Park,'' ``Men In Black'' and countless other films. We've certainly come a long way, haven't we?

But what of tomorrow? Where will the enormous funds to create the next generation of life-protecting and life-saving technology come from? From Hollywood? I don't think so. Hollywood money people can only see as far as the next blockbuster film's finale. From Washington, D.C.? Nope, the U.S. government has all but gotten out of the military business and is still decimating our nation's defense capability with every additional military base closing and contract cancellation.

In the future, world leadership in computer and defense technologies - and the national security they can produce and have already produced - will only benefit those nations, less driven by fantasy, that still believe that protecting their citizens from possible tyranny and their borders from possible invasion is vastly more important than giving moviegoers the ability to escape from reality by watching high-tech thrill scenes and Oscar-winning special effects.