The Egg Unveiled
An hour had passed since the Digital Revolution—Comdex—had opened its doors. ID Technology’s booth was packed to the brim with attendees, buyers, and members of the press, yet the space inside remained remarkably organized. The staff running the booth were veterans from the flagship stores, seasoned hands who had weathered crowds like this many times before. They moved with practiced efficiency, turning chaos into order while simultaneously handing out large paper bags filled with promotional gifts. Since ID Technology was the only company offering such sizable bags, anyone carrying one would spread the brand’s name throughout the entire convention hall.
“Whew, I’m finally free. Let’s take a walk around,” Yoo Jae-won said. He had spent the opening hours giving nonstop interviews in front of the cameras. On a business day reserved for industry insiders, he might have strolled through the show in comfort, but the event was not yet polished enough for that kind of separation. To truly understand how far computer technology had advanced, he needed to blend in with the general crowd and wander freely.
There was plenty to marvel at, yet nothing that truly impressed him. A few laptops featured LCD screens, but their resolutions were low, the displays monochrome, and the ghosting was severe. They were clearly meant only for word processing or spreadsheets. Even their bulk was excessive—thick as Korean dictionaries and just as heavy. Powered by 386 SX processors, their batteries, fully charged, would drain completely after only an hour or two of use. Without dedicated mobile chips, the components devoured power. A three-kilogram machine, more than half of which was battery, was considered impressive if it lasted three hours.
“The mobile sector still has a long way to go,” he muttered. Only the ultrabooks of the early twenty-first century would feel truly portable. Rather than wait for that future, he decided it would be better to dig the well himself. Batteries, mobile chips, cameras, accelerometers, GPS modules, miniature sensors, and mobile modems—too many fields still lagged behind industrial standards.
Still, Comdex was not entirely disappointing. One product caught his eye: scanners and printers. A scanner capable of converting photographs into 32-bit color digital files stood proudly on display, manufactured by Japan’s Sharp.
“Japan, of course.”
In the eighties and nineties, Japanese electronics companies commanded global respect. Alongside the scanner, compact electronic dictionaries and organizers—slightly larger than an adult’s hand—showed impressive refinement. The color printer came from Tectonic, an American startup. It used a three-color inkjet process, and the company boasted that special coated photo paper would produce output rivaling actual photographs. In the dim convention lighting it looked convincing, but under brighter conditions the resolution fell short of true photographic quality. Even so, compared with 24-pin dot-matrix printers, the inkjet’s advantages in speed, color, and resolution were overwhelming.
Superior technology did not guarantee commercial success. The 32-bit color scanner cost four thousand dollars; Tectonic’s color inkjet printer, thirteen thousand. The printer’s price rivaled that of a car because it included a workstation for control and used a proprietary cable rather than standard serial or parallel ports. Yoo Jae-won had no memory of Tectonic surviving into the twenty-first century. Companies with good technology that collapsed early always had their reasons.
He purchased three Sharp scanners—one for the American development team and two to take back to Korea. Afterward he visited the Intel and IBM booths, then stopped by Microsoft’s, which was still embroiled in its own battles. The Microsoft staff looked startled by his and Remington’s arrival, so he lingered twice as long as at other booths, examining their products. DOS 4.0 remained their flagship, with promotional imagery for the upcoming Windows version, yet the atmosphere felt subdued. Android Alpha was eating into their market share, and the pressure was real. While the freeware version of Android Alpha had been blocked from distribution, the ad-free edition bundled with ID Office continued to circulate without issue. Side-by-side comparisons left DOS 4.0 with few defenders outside hardware specialists. Microsoft’s attempt to counter ID Office with enhanced memory management had backfired, causing crashes in other programs as well. Software developers were now advising against using the new memory features altogether.
The one bright spot was MS Office 1.0 for Macintosh. Porting the DOS versions of Word and Excel to the Mac’s graphical environment had earned Microsoft attention, and its familiar name helped. Visually it resembled ID Office, yet the gap in dynamic object handling and data-processing speed was obvious. Anyone who tried both programs side by side did not hesitate to criticize Microsoft’s offering.
Microsoft’s booth offered nothing new. “No new products?” Yoo Jae-won asked the booth manager directly. He doubted they would bring only old weapons to a Comdex where they would clash head-on with ID Technology. The manager responded with an awkward smile and said nothing. Clearly they planned to unveil something later, once senior executives arrived for a presentation. Pressing further would yield nothing, so he offered a polite bow and continued his tour.
Then he spotted a familiar logo.
“Whoa—Ilseong!”
Tucked in a corner, Ilseong Electronics had a booth after all. Their display featured a finished computer—a full 486 machine. A boxy desktop with an equally angular monitor sat atop the chassis. Discovering countrymen in a foreign land stirred complicated feelings: warmth mixed with a touch of wariness. While other Korean firms hesitated to venture overseas, Ilseong had secured a booth at Comdex despite its modest scale—an impressively swift move. He stepped inside, exchanged a brief conversation, and left. Though Yoo Jae-won had been cordial, the Ilseong staff remained visibly guarded; the atmosphere had never turned friendly.
By the time evening approached, he had purchased every intriguing product he encountered. ID Technology’s conference was about to begin.
“I thought booking the MGM conference hall was excessive,” Choi Kang-wook, chief of staff, admitted as he surveyed the crowd. “It seems I underestimated our company’s drawing power.” The vast space, large enough for hundreds, was now completely filled. Ninety percent of the seats had been empty an hour earlier; three minutes before the start, not only were there no empty seats, there was barely standing room.
“Anyone interested in the Security Challenge couldn’t possibly stay away,” Yoo Jae-won said with a chuckle. His prediction had come true. Today’s MGM conference topic was “AES-256: A Complete Dissection—and One Bonus.” AES-256 was the encryption algorithm inside ID Office that had withstood millions of challengers in the Security Challenge. For a ten-million-dollar prize and fame, contestants were desperate to uncover even a single secret. When the creator himself offered to explain it, the rush was inevitable.
Media and competitors wondered what revelation might emerge, though many remained skeptical. ID Office’s success rested on AES-256; why would its maker risk everything by disclosing it? They underestimated Yoo Jae-won’s boldness.
At exactly six o’clock the hall lights dimmed, leaving only the stage brightly lit.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the owner and president of ID Technology, as well as its Executive Developer—Mr. Yoo Jae-won!”
The announcer’s crisp voice rang out. A spotlight swung toward the stage entrance, revealing Yoo Jae-won in a crisp suit. Hundreds of eyes fixed on him at once, and for a moment his breath caught. Yet he had stood before school assemblies as student council president countless times; the pressure faded quickly. He strode confidently to the center of the stage. His image appeared on the massive screen behind him, projected live from the cameras. In an era before HD, let alone UHD, the picture quality was modest, but the live feed infused the conference with immediate energy. Late arrivals at the back reacted visibly—gasps of surprise, murmurs of “Is that really the president?”
Not everyone present had participated in the Security Challenge. Many knew only Remington by sight and recognized Yoo Jae-won’s name alone. Even those who had seen photographs found the real man different. Fortunately, he did not appear overly youthful. The tailored suit and careful styling added three or four years to his appearance, according to Choi Kang-wook, who knew his true age.
“Good evening. I am Yoo Jae-won, president of ID Technology. If my Korean name proves difficult to pronounce, feel free to call me Jay.”
He introduced himself in flawless American English. The murmuring hall fell silent the moment he began. Whether it was charisma or simply stage command, the effect was undeniable. He pressed forward.
“Some of you may doubt my programming ability based solely on my appearance. In a moment, I will remove all doubt. Because right here, on this stage, I will write code live and reveal the complete source code of AES-256.”
The declaration detonated like a bomb. For a heartbeat the audience simply blinked, then erupted in a collective roar. Yoo Jae-won had not made the announcement for applause. His primary audience was the U.S. federal government. They had formally requested to adopt ID Office for official use—on the condition that the source code be provided. They wished to verify there were no backdoors or other risks before a large-scale rollout. The situation mirrored the pressure China would later exert on Microsoft, Google, and Apple. Those companies had ultimately supplied their code to avoid losing the vast Chinese market. Yoo Jae-won made the same calculation. The United States had asked; the moment had come. ID Office contained no backdoors, so he had nothing to hide. If the federal government adopted it, global dominance would follow naturally. Should the code ever leak, astronomical damages would be claimed. In exchange for providing the source, he had decided to patent AES-256 worldwide—in the U.S., Korea, and beyond. A patent required full disclosure of the structure, allowing any company to examine the technology. Countless IT firms would want AES-256; as computing advanced, maintaining high security levels became essential. Licensing the algorithm at a premium price would generate substantial revenue. The beauty of the plan lay in the fact that knowing the source code alone did not enable decryption. Without the original encryption key, even the creator could never recover the data if the key was lost.
No one in the hall grasped the full strategic implications in that instant. They were simply stunned by the announcement.
“Ah, before I show you the source code, allow me to introduce a friend who will assist me today.”
As he finished speaking, a new spotlight illuminated the stage entrance. Remington stood there, visibly tense, and flinched when the light hit him. He recovered quickly, pushing a cart toward Yoo Jae-won. The cart’s contents were hidden beneath a purple velvet cloth, revealing only a square, box-like shape. As the cart neared the stage, dramatic music swelled. When the tension reached its peak, the main screen focused on the covered object. Yoo Jae-won, perfectly timed from rehearsal, stepped forward, swept the velvet away, and declared:
“I present to you the Egg—the new standard in all-in-one PCs.”
The Egg, destined to redefine the all-in-one computer, finally revealed its brilliant form to the world.