Xerox PARC Celebrates 40th Anniversary 57
CWmike writes "For 40 years, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center has been a place of technological creativity and bold ideas, writes Todd Weiss. The inventions it has spawned, from Ethernet networking to laser printing and the graphical user interface, have led to myriad technologies that allow us to use computers in ways that we take for granted today. When it opened on July 1, 1970, PARC was set up as a division of Xerox Corp. The idea was to invest in PARC as a springboard for developing new technologies and fresh concepts that would lead to future products. 'Conducting research at PARC four decades ago was like magic,' says Dr. Robert S. Bauer, who worked at PARC from 1970 to 2001. 'In an era of political and social upheaval, we came to work every day with a passion to free technology from the grip of the military-industrial complex and bring computation to the people.' Indeed, the company's 'technology first' culture has sometimes brought it under fire. PARC has often been criticized for its past failures to capitalize on some of its greatest inventions, allowing other companies to cash in on its ideas. (Today, PARC has a team working to protect its intellectual property.) Nevertheless, its reputation as a technology innovator is impeccable."
Why PARC's Fault? (Score:5, Interesting)
"PARC has often been criticized for its past failures to capitalize on some of its greatest inventions" How is that PARC's fault? More likely the short-sighted Xerox management that failed to see what they had?
Re:Why PARC's Fault? (Score:4, Interesting)
"Inventions it has spawned" (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess PARC's research into Hypertext wasn't worth mentioning?
political and social upheaval? (Score:5, Interesting)
'In an era of political and social upheaval, we came to work every day with a passion to free technology from the grip of the military-industrial complex and bring computation to the people.'
Much of PARC's success was because the country was in a deep recession in the late 70's and early 80's. All those guys with PhD's who wanted to live quiet lives as university professors were forced to get jobs instead, it allowed PARC to put together quite a brain trust.. But they probably would've done even better if they had stuck to technology instead of trying to solve the world's political and social issues. PARC employees heavily influenced the decline of the Association for Computing Machinery by taking over many of the leadership spots and pushing their social activist agenda.
MicroSoft & Google are interesting successors (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:political and social upheaval? (Score:3, Interesting)
To say that somebody would have been more effective without the very thing that motivated them - after they were in fact highly successful - just strikes me as nonsensical.
If their goal was to 'free technology from the grip of the military-industrial complex and bring computation to the people,' how could it have been any more successful?
You can always say, "well, it probably would have happened anyways," but really, what technologies can surpass WIMP in helping to popularize computing? Hardly any.
Re:Its kind of funny that... (Score:2, Interesting)
If Xerox had been led by somebody with brains, they'd own the personal and business computing markets now.
Instead they gave it all away for some beads and rum.
Free Technology (Score:2, Interesting)
And now we have to free technology from the grip of the large corporate-industrial complex and bring computation to the people.
Not much has changed.