Ted Barnett has been at the frontier of technological revolutions for the last four decades. From working as a product manager at Apple in the 1980s, to navigating the dot-com boom with a web-based calendar startup that successfully sold to AOL, Ted has built an incredible career out of seeing what’s coming next. But he hasn’t just stayed in the realm of traditional tech products. He’s built online kids’ games, manufactured hardware (like internet-connected talking pumpkins!), and more recently, morphed into a digital artist.
Currently, Ted is bringing history to life through Timewalk—an open-source platform built in Unreal Engine aimed at recreating historical cities down to the smallest detail. He's also co-founding Cobblestone Labs, a project dedicated to creating immersive, AI-driven projected spaces where groups of people can share magical digital experiences. To master these new tools, Ted recently went back to NYU to get a graduate degree in virtual production.
Hello SciCom's Eli Ruffer recently sat down with Ted to talk about his eclectic career, what it means to use AI as a "new paintbrush," and why he believes the world is actually getting better.
Eli: Could you start by giving me an overview of your career in general?
Ted: My career has always been a mix of technology and business. I studied computer engineering at the University of Michigan, but I chose not to go into tech right away. Instead, I went to McKinsey & Company in New York. I was one of the first engineers they ever hired; they usually hired econ majors, but they figured they should get "one of these computer people." I liked the mix of using computers in the business world, and eventually I went to Harvard Business School to finish that arc of tech plus business.
After that, I went to Apple as a product manager. It was during the interregnum when John Sculley was in charge, not the Steve Jobs era. It lacked that famous inspiring leadership, but it was a great place to work with really smart people who cared deeply about the consumer experience. From there, I jumped into startups. I worked at GO Corporation, a pen computer startup that was way ahead of its time—kind of like VR is now. Then I became a producer at a gaming company called PF Magic, doing online video games where you could play your friends over modems.
In 1996, someone showed me a web browser, and I realized it was going to change everything. A few friends from Apple and I built websites for companies like Bank of America and Microsoft, but eventually, we decided to launch our own startup. My idea was a web-based calendar. Just like there was web-based email, the next logical step on the internet was calendars. We called it When.com, raised money from Benchmark Capital, and it was an absolute rocket ship ride. Just one day short of our one-year anniversary, we were bought by AOL.
Since then, I’ve worked on a mix of startups and passion projects. I was VP of Products at Ofoto (before Google Photos existed), worked on short-form books with Byliner, built online games for kids, and even started a hardware company called Smart Deco that made talking pumpkins. Now, my focus is on Timewalk and Cobblestone Labs—using things like Unreal Engine and AI to build immersive virtual spaces.
Eli: You mentioned being at the frontier of something where people don't have a point of reference. How has the role of communicating about technology played out in your career?
Ted: Before I was ever a product manager, I actually worked in a store in Cincinnati selling Atari 800 computers. I was a high school tech nerd, and they kept me around in case the older sales guys had questions. Eventually, they just had me do the sales, because the older salesmen were used to selling typewriters and copiers and had no idea how to explain 64k of memory. Later, I had the same gig at an IBM product center.
People would come in with anxiety and fear. They’d feel stupid because they didn't know how computers worked. But I don't think people should ever feel stupid. Unfortunately, some computer people enjoy being on a pedestal, speaking a secret language, and making things more mystifying than they need to be. I got a lot of practice explaining benefits, reassuring people, and translating things so they didn’t feel intimidated. I enjoyed being that bridge between the tech world and the consumer world.
That theme carried through my whole career. I went to McKinsey knowing I’d be working with business people who didn't understand what a database was. Whether it was explaining the early internet to executives or building prototypes because people couldn't imagine a web-based calendar, you have to find a way to communicate clearly and bring people along.
Eli: From looking at your work, it seems like you have a deep interest in art and using technology to create it. How did you make that transition?
Ted: I like to say I'm morphing into a digital artist. My mother was a portrait painter, so I grew up around art. While a lot of what I’m doing in Unreal Engine is highly technical, I’m trying to recreate reality in an artistic way and understand history. I like to think of this technology as the new paintbrushes.
With Timewalk, I’ve been building a 3D model of New York City in 1609, 1664, and 1776. We are trying to make it possible to visit any city across time. We want to project these historical worlds into an immersive room so you feel like you're actually standing in 1664 New York. It’s technical, but the goal is purely artistic—trying to find artful ways to combine these tools to make something beautiful and not cold.
Eli: Do you have underlying principles for how you want to use these new "paintbrushes" when you’re pitching or thinking through a project?
Ted: My main guiding principle is always asking: What is a thing you couldn't have done before?
These tools let you do magical things. For example, I’m working with something called MetaHumans in Unreal Engine. These are 3D model characters that have just reached an incredible new level of fidelity—their mouths move naturally, their eyes track you. If you combine that with AI, you can literally talk to a 20-year-old Alexander Hamilton. He knows exactly what's going on in New York that day, he doesn't know about iPhones, and you can ask him anything.
Is that art? I think it is. It’s making something that was unthinkable for one person to be doing. To pull that off in the past, I would have had to raise three million dollars and spend a year on it. I think of these AI tools as doing two things: they make entirely new, magical experiences possible, and they lower the cost of creation so you can work at a scale you could never reach before.
A lot of people are worried AI is going to replace every job, and while it will definitely be disruptive, it’s also a team that works for you. It helps you build a piece of art or software that you could never have built alone. I like that sense of uncertainty and potential. Since I’ve seen so many cycles now over my life, I can see the pattern: this is going in a good direction, and it’s going to let us do things that are incredibly cool.
Eli: With these projects—like stepping into historical New York or being in an immersive room where the walls react to you—what do you want people to take away from that experience?
Ted: Regarding Timewalk, I'm a history nut. Understanding the past helps you understand how fast things change. I'm fundamentally an optimist. I genuinely believe the world is getting better in almost every single way. Most people don't feel that way because the news depresses them and tells them everything sucks. But if you actually see what the world really looked like in the past, and how difficult it was, it gives you a much better perspective on our trajectory.
I want people to have the experience of time travel. I don't think physical time travel is possible due to physics and paradoxes, but I think we finally have the digital means to get there. It’s our stories, our families, our past.
With Cobblestone Labs, the takeaway I want is the value of a shared digital experience. I think AI is going to be able to make Star Wars-caliber movies in about three years—actors, scripts, everything. If it can make one, it can make one every day. There will be so much addictive, solitary entertainment where you just sit with goggles in a Matrix-style warm bath. I’m hopeful people will still want to take those goggles off, get out of the house, and hang out with other people.
I want to create group experiences that use this brilliant technology but bring people together. Imagine playing Dungeons & Dragons, but you're sitting in a room where it actually looks and feels like you're in a tavern or a dungeon, with the environment reacting to your game. I want people to walk away with a feeling of delight and excitement about what technology can do, instead of just the fear and anxiety that so many people feel right now.
Eli: That sounds like an incredible way to combat the isolation of technology. Is the idea to continually employ artists?
Ted: Definitely. At Cobblestone, we want to attract a bunch of artists and animators to help us build things. We’ll have corporate clients, sure—companies might hire us to make their skyscraper lobby an immersive space, or to build an immersive room at their headquarters to bring clients into. But for us, the lab is an excuse to play with cool new tech and give artists a venue.
Some of the companies that make the high-end projectors and LED screens want showrooms in New York. But we also want it to be a place where artists who know 3D art, Unreal, Blender, and music interaction can sit in our lab and do their art. It’s a balancing act between serving clients and creating pure art, but we’re building a space where both can happen on the bleeding edge.
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To learn more about Ted Barnett’s work blending history, art, and immersive technology, keep an eye out for Timewalk and the new experiences coming to Cobblestone Labs!
For a fun science fact, check out Ted's profile on our team page!
And please get in touch with us for a free consultation if this spotlight inspires any ideas!
