In the marketing of the Star, however, many decisions that appear short-sighted or perverse in retrospect made perfect sense at the time. The Star was designed in part to serve a market many office equipment pundits of the day expected to thrive for decades: for large-scale, closed, fully integrated office systems—"turnkey" systems—that would be sold and serviced exclusively by the vendor (i.e., Xerox). That this architecture seemed inevitable is unsurprising, for it was the perfect analogue to the large-scale, closed, turnkey mainframe office data processing systems the Star would replace.
The Star's software was not designed to be accessible to outside software engineers—as would be that of the IBM PC and the Macintosh— for two reasons. One was that no independent software industry existed at the time. (It would not emerge until the mid-1980s.) The other was that software was then quite clearly deemed not to be patentable; the U.S. patent office would not even accept an application. Although it was possible to copyright particular screen displays and certain sequences of code, that was a feeble protection against dieft of the intellectual ideas embodied in the system—as was shown by Apple s unsuccessful lawsuit against Microsoft for copying the "look and feel" of the Macintosh display in Windows.
For the most part, the computer scientists and engineers of PARC's early years are ambivalent about the research center's relationship with Xerox. They remember the frustrations of trying to communicate the significance of their inventions to East Coast executives who viewed them as alien technologies. Yet they cannot forget that Xerox brought them together, paid them handsomely, and allowed them with considerable forbearance to pursue their own dreams of a personal interactive computer.
Some who have gone on to chair their own corporations or research labs would not dare to grant their employees the same latitude they enjoyed themselves. Says Chuck Geschke, co-founder and chairman of Adobe Systems, "Our attitude at PARC was sort of that it was a higher calling to do pure research. But here at Adobe our advanced technology group does not just stay in advanced technology. If they put together the germ of an idea and start to get it close to prototyping and even decide to turn it into a product, we encourage them to follow it all the way through to first customer shipment. The only way I know to transfer technology is with people."
Others salute their troubled parent for tolerating them as long as it did. 'When SDS crashed and burned Xerox might have decided that all this electronics stuff isn't what it's cracked up to be, in which case the whole thing would have disintegrated," observes Butler Lampson. "But in fact they stuck to their original charter with great tenacity. At least that's the way it looked to us."
Some were grateful for the opportunity to create, and rather indifferent to the issue of who eventually booked the profits. Still others are aware that PARC's staff only rarely took the lead in forcing an understanding of the technology upon their corporate bosses.
"All of us who worked there enjoyed blaming Xerox for what went wrong," observes Bob Metcalfe. "But Xerox gave us the job. Why blame them? So few of us accepted responsibility."
One last misconception about PARC—indeed, about any research center engaged in open-ended fundamental research—is that the corporation is somehow obligated to exploit every idea the lab throws off. In a sufficiently broad-based research program, some ideas will simply not fit into the corporations business.
"One of Pake's lines was that a great research organization produces a lot of ideas that its company can't use," says John Shoch. "He was saying that you shouldn't be surprised when the business planners turn down an idea."
Yet this notion of the corporate research center as a sort of public benefit, like endowing college scholarships for the needy or underwriting opera performances on television, is the one for which Xerox is most commonly derided.
"I sometimes wonder now if Xerox isn't unduly pummeled because they failed to realize such monumental opportunities," Gary Starkweather says. "John Sculley [the former chairman of Apple, where Starkweather worked after leaving PARC] said to me once, 'I don't ever want a PARC.' I said, 'Why not?' He said, 'All the technology leaked out.' I said, 'You just want the ability to control such an institution, not to not have tire institution.'"
But Sculleys view remains the prevalent one. No corporate lab exists today drat resembles the PARC of the 1970s and 1980s, not even the PARC of the 1990s, where great advances are being made in physics, information science, and graphic technologies. There are several reasons for this, some having to do with the life cycle of technological change. For the science of computing is no longer at the historic inflection point it occupied at the start of the 1970s, when every step on the road of discovery was the equivalent of a giant leap into a new world.
A more important reason, however, is that the corporate landscape has changed, perhaps inalterably. No company, no matter how wealthy, dares devote even a fraction of its wealth to a search for knowledge that may not produce a return to the bottom line, as Xerox did. The Utopian ideal of a corporate laboratory whose scientists are free to roam through Idea- space draws only ridicule today. Consider Microsoft, the company that comes closest to the Xerox of 1970, at least in terms of its torrential cash flow. It is no coincidence that Microsoft Research today employs Butler
Lampson, Chuck Thacker, Charles Simonyi, Gary Starkweather, and Alvy Ray Smith. It is engaged in as explicit an attempt to replicate Xerox PARC as any company has attempted in recent years. Yet even Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, prefers to define Microsoft Research in terms of what PARC was not: "We didn't want a situation like Xerox, where the research was decoupled from product design. [We want] people who are supersmart but also have a desire to see their work in use."
This does not mean that great discoveries, even surprising ones, will not be made here and there by researchers working for corporations. It simply means that a certain quality once possessed by PARC in its extraordinary early years seems to have departed from the world of science and technology, perhaps forever. Call it magic.Afterlives
Daniel G. Bobrow is a senior researcher at Xerox PARC.
David R. Boggs lives in northern California, where he designs and markets a new generation of networking circuit boards.
John Seely Brown is chief scientist of Xerox and director of PARC.
Lynn A. Conway is professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan.
L. Peter Deutsch lives in northern California, where he develops and markets a version of GhostScript, a page description language related to PostScript.
William Duvall, who lives in Idaho, invented Surfwatch, a program to prevent children from inadvertently encountering objectionable websites while surfing the Internet.
Jerome I. Elkind is retired and living in northern California, where he is helping develop software to help the disabled use computers.
John Ellenby founded Grid Systems to develop and market laptop computers, then sold it to Tandy Corporation, the owner of the Radio Shack retail chain. He has since founded GeoVector,
which develops and markets marine navigation and communication devices.
Douglas Fairbairn is a vice president and general manager at Cadence Design Systems, a maker of VLSI design tools in San Jose, California.
Edward R. Fiala is a senior researcher at Adobe Systems in San Jose, California.
Charles M. Geschke is co-founder and co-chairman (with John Warnock), and president of Adobe Systems, Inc.
Adele Goldberg is a co-founder of Neometron, a Redwood City, California, company that develops learning and management tools for the Internet and other projects. Earlier she co-founded ParcPlace, a joint venture with Xerox to develop Smalltalk applications.
Jacob E. Goldman is retired and living in Connecticut, where he is a private investor.
William F. Gunning is largely retired, but still reports regularly to his Xerox office in Palo Alto.
Harold H. Hall retired to his family home in South Dakota.
>
Chris Jeffers is president of Teklicon, a northern California firm that provides experts on science and technology for parties involved in lawsuits and patent and insurance cases.
Richard E. Jones retired from Xerox in 1998. He lives in southern California.
Alan C. Kay is a fellow at Walt Disney Imagineering in Glendale, California, where his research group includes Ted Kaehler and Daniel H. Ingalls. He worked briefly at Atari after leaving PARC and subsequently joined Apple Computer as an Apple Fellow, leaving in 1996.
Rutler W. Lampson is a fellow at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
David Liddle is chairman and chief executive officer of Interval Research Corporation, a high-technology think tank located within walking distance of PARC and funded by Microsoft co- founder Paul Allen.
Edward M. McCreight is a senior researcher at Adobe Systems in San Jose, California.
Carver A. Mead is Gordon and Betty Moore Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology.
Diana Merry-Shapiro lives in New York City and works for J. P. Morgan & Co. as a consultant on Smalltalk-based programming systems.
Robert M. Metcalfe co-founded 3Com Corporation in 1979 and retired from the company in 1990, when its annual revenues approached one-half-billion dollars. He is vice president/technology at International Data Group, a publisher of computer industry trade journals, and a weekly columnist on networking and telecommunications issues for IDG's InfoWorld.
James G. Mitchell is vice president for technology and architecture for the Javasoft division of Sun Microsystems, the developer of the Java programming language.
James H. Morris is H. A. Simon Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and chairman of the department of computer science at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Timothy Mott is a venture capital investor and lives in Idaho.
Severo Ornstein is retired and living with his wife, the former PARC researcher Laura Gould, in northern California. In 1981, concerned about the threat of nuclear war, he co-founded Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.
George E. Pake is retired and living in northern California.
Max Palevsky is a self-employed industrialist and private investor in Southern California.Ron Rider is vice president of Xerox's Digital Imaging Technology Center in Palo Alto.
John F. Shoch is a venture capital investor at Asset Management Inc. in northern California.
Richard Shoup, who has been awarded an Emmy and an Oscar for his work on digital paint systems, left PARC in 1979 to co- found Aurora Systems, a developer and manufacturer of digital videographic and animation system. In 1993 he joined Interval Research Corporation.
Charles Simonyi works at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, where he is developing a programming system known as "intentional programming."
Alvy Ray Smith was director of computer graphics research at Lucas- film and a co-founder of its spinoff, Pixar. He joined Microsoft as its first graphics fellow in 1994.
William J. Spencer, who retired in 1990 as Xerox's chief technical officer, is chairman of Sematech, a joint research initiative formed by ten U.S. semiconductor companies.
Robert Spinrad retired as Xerox vice president for technology strategy in 1998. He lives in northern California.
Robert F. Sproull is a vice president of Sun Microsystems, Inc., and a fellow of Sun Laboratories, its research center.
M. Frank Squires joined Sematech in 1991 as chief administrative officer. He died in May 1998, shortly after being named managing director of the consortium's international branch.
Gary K. Starkweather, who joined Apple Computer after leaving PARC, is now a fellow at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington.
Paul Strassmann lives in Connecticut, where he is a private consultant on corporate information management.
William R. (Bert) Sutherland is vice president of Sun Microsystems, Inc., and director of Sun Laboratories, its research center, which he joined upon its founding in 1990.
Robert W. Taylor retired as director of Digital Equipment Corp. s Systems Research Laboratory in 1997. He lives in northern California.
Warren Teitelman is Vice President of Research and Development at BayStone Software, a developer of integrated sales and marketing software for corporate clients.
Lawrence G. Tesler, who stayed at Apple Computer until 1998, rising to the position of chief scientist, is now president of Stage- cast Inc., a developer of interactive simulation software in Palo Alto, California.
Charles P. Thacker worked for DEC until 1997, when he resigned from the Systems Research Center to join Microsoft Research in Cambridge, U.K.
David Thornburg, director of the Thornburg Center for Professional Development, is a lecturer and consultant on the uses of technology in education.
John C. Urbach is retired and living in northern California.
John Warnock is co-founder and co-chairman (with Chuck Geschke) and chief executive officer of Adobe Systems.
Source Notes
Introduction: The Time Machine
Page
xxv Bill Gates's defense: Manes & Andrews, Gates, p. 361. xxvii Didn't even patent: "Xerox Won't Duplicate Past Errors," Business Week, 9/29/97, p. 98.
The Alto failed: Stross, Randall E., "Mr. Gates Builds His Brain Trust," Fortune, December 8, 1997.
Chapter 1: The Impresario
8 The notion of a human: Palfreman & Swade, The Dream Machine, p. 97.
9 "The Computer as a Communications Device": Science if Technology, April 1968.
12 That made me nervous: Licklider Oral History, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota.
12 I did not feel: Ibid.
Chapter 2: McColough's Folly
22 McColough thought: George White, 10/6/97.
24 If we're going to be big: McColough, quoted in Jacobson & Hillkirk, Xerox: American Samurai, p. 214.
24 Peter turned over: White.
25 He should have known: Goldman, 11/6/97.
25 The only ballgame: Jacobson & Hillkirk, p. 214.
26 determined to make a deal: Palevsky, 4/21/98.
26 very, very short: Los Angeles Times, 2/11/69.
29 It had been making profits: Jacobson & Hillkirk, p. 214.
29 It was a great phrase: David Liddle, 6/17/98.
30 He was talking: Richard Jones, 3/10/98.
30 He never tired: White
31 If the new research center: Goldman, Proposal for a New Corporate Advanced Scientific
Chapter 3: The House on Porter Drive
41 I'm one of the oldest: Wes Clark Oral History, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota
41 That of a very large: Clark, "The LINC Was Early and Small" in Goldberg (ed.), A History of Personal Workstations, p. 357. (Italics in original.)
41 Time-sharers were still: Clark oral history.
41 At that time computers: Severo Ornstein Oral History, Charles Babbage Institute.
44 During his time at ARPA: Robert Taylor, J. C. R. Licklider oral histories, Charles Babbage Institute
44 45 Taylor conversation with Herzfeld: Taylor oral history; Taylor to author, 9/10/98.
45 I blackmailed: Ibid.
46 It was ridiculous: Ibid.
47 Taylor visits to Vietnam: Taylor, Wessler interviews; Taylor oral history.
47 the White House got a single report: Taylor oral history.
Chapter 4: Utopia
56 Xerox's "lost decade": Jacobson & Hillkirk, p. 69.
59-60 Goldman's meeting: Thornburg interview 9/12/97; Perry & Wallich, "Inside the PARC: The 'Information Architects,'" IEEE Spectrum, October 1985, p. 72.
61 PARC pay scale: Frank Squires, 1/8/98.
64 Engelbart first encountered: Engelbart, "The Augmented Knowledge Workshop," in Goldberg, p. 234.
65 No one is quite s
ure: Ibid., p. 196.
65 We built special electronics . . . Don't tell me!: Ibid., p. 203.
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