Marc “Davka” DeGroot (July 2, 1959 - August 8, 2004) was a software developer. Son to Louis de Groot and Barbara de Groot. Brother to David de Groot.

He contributed to early virtual reality companies. He was a senior computer scientist at VPL Research and CTO of Ono-Sendai¹⁾, responsible for the never-released Sega VR²⁾. He founded Immersive Systems Inc. to develop a virtual world runtime named Meme.

He is listed as one of the inventors on US patent 5526022, the patent for the head orientation sensor to be used by Sega VR.

Marc was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in Dutchess and Rockland Counties, New York. In 1974, Marc studied at the “Ecole Active Bilangue” (maybe the Jeannine Manuel one) in Paris, France.³⁾

Marc designed audio systems for VPL Research.⁴⁾⁵⁾

His company Immersive Systems Inc. was created on January 18, 1994 ⁶⁾

On June 22, 1994, Marc announced Meme (Multitasking Extensible Messaging Environment), a “virtual world development system” released a month earlier, on the www-vrml@wired.com mailing list.⁷⁾

In September 1997, Marc filed patent US6421047B1 (“Multi-user virtual reality system for simulating a three-dimensional environment”) for Meme.

On November 22, 1999, the company was suspended.⁸⁾

After moving to Taos, New Mexico, on August 8 2004, Marc committed suicide.

Meme was part of a greater project of deGroot's to build a decentralized online 3D multi-user universe.⁹⁾ This project was revealed in March 2000 as Metatopia. The name was inspired by Snow Crash's “metaverse”, after he read the book in fall 1992.¹⁰⁾

• While Mark described himself as “fluent in French” on his CV, a french Usenet post written in 1998¹¹⁾ reveals that his French was mostly grammatically sound, but had rough vocabulary.
• Marc is listed as having provided “helpful comments” for the GNU Forth implementation, GForth.¹²⁾

• Interesting comment from DonHopkins on HN
• Personal website
• Marc's CV
• CyberEdge Journal Obituary