50 Years Later, We're Still Living in the Xerox Alto's World:
[...] I'm talking about the Xerox Alto, which debuted in the early spring of 1973 at the photocopying giant's newly established R&D laboratory, the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). The reason it is so uncannily familiar today is simple: We are now living in a world of computing that the Alto created.
The Alto was a wild departure from the computers that preceded it. It was built to tuck under a desk, with its monitor, keyboard, and mouse on top. It was totally interactive, responding directly to its single user.
[...] The people who developed the Alto came to Xerox PARC from universities, industrial labs, and commercial ventures, bringing with them diverse experiences and skills. But these engineers and programmers largely shared the same point of view. They conceived and developed the Alto in a remarkable burst of creativity, used it to develop diverse and pathbreaking software, and then moved out of Xerox, taking their achievements, design knowledge, and experiences into the wider world, where they and others built on the foundation they had established.
[...] The type of computing they envisioned was thoroughly interactive and personal, comprehensively networked, and completely graphical—with high-resolution screens and high-quality print output.
[...] Oddly, at the time, an expensive new laboratory was also immediately financially attractive: R&D expenditures were frequently counted as assets instead of business expenses, all with Wall Street's approval. The more you spent, the better your balance sheet looked.
[...] As should now be apparent, how the Alto came to shape our lives with computers a half century later isn't the story of any one individual. In our culture, however, the history of technology is habitually presented as a sequence of remarkable individual achievements. But this is wrong. Innovation is the work of groups, of communities. These provide the context and the medium for the actions of the individual. Leadership is a meaningless concept outside of a group.
The remarkable story of the Alto is the story of such communities. It is a story of how a broad research community developed a shared vision for interactive, networked, graphical, personal computing. It is a story of how a smaller group of talented individuals came together in a new laboratory to realize that vision and to experiment with it. And it is a story of this group moving on, finding new colleagues and organizations in the rapidly expanding personal computer industry, and working for decades to bring the Alto way of computing to the world.
A lengthy, but very interesting article showing how the Xerox lab had a major hand in the personal computer, TCP/IP, Apple, 3COM, Adobe, etc.. --hubie
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, @08:09AM (1 child)
Research is an investment in the future. It's also speculative. However, it can discover something fundamentally new or come up with a radically innovative new piece of engineering that can put you miles ahead of the competition.
The MBAs don't want that level of risk on the company accounts. They want quarter on quarter growth which is achieved through sweating assets, tightening the company's grip on existing "intellectual property" and working the staff harder and harder.
I've worked for some big name companies like Xerox (and got transferred to HCL) and I've experienced it first hand. I have friends who have worked for HP. I've worked with people who were at DEC, Compaq and all sorts of erstwhile big names in the computer industry.
Those companies all suffered the same fate.
A long time friend worked for HP for a few years. His tale was the same, one of ever increasing workloads, pay rises below inflation, annual lay offs and outsourcing to India. He left and got a huge pay rise.
Those companies are lumbering dinosaurs. The world has changed and they haven't. Their day is gone.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jelizondo on Wednesday March 08, @02:41PM
HP was a once a great company run by engineers for engineers. Compaq was once a trailblazing company. Xerox was once a respected company with a bright future.
They were made into dinosaurs, really more like zombies, by Wall Street greed.
If we make a world obsessed with the short-term, no one has a future. If we make an egotistical world, then the most ruthless, egotistical people will run it.
I’m not an “eat the rich” person, but I come to realize that greed eats the future.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, @02:39PM (4 children)
> echo "...some of us are still living in a console world."
(Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday March 08, @03:07PM (3 children)
The word "console" means to comfort someone who is distressed by having to use the command line.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 4, Funny) by acid andy on Wednesday March 08, @03:27PM (2 children)
I'm not always a fan of your wordplay, Danny, but this one deserves to go into the SoylentNews fortunes. Nice.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08, @03:43PM
Yep, it's easily as funny as the fortune I'm seeing now,
> What do you give a man who has everything? Penicillin. -- Jerry Lester
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday March 08, @07:19PM
Thank you.
I try to inflict puns every day. Once in a while inspiration strikes. Violently.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...