WYSIWYG: 'What you see is what you get." Describes a system in which the computer user interacts with the machine visually through a screen display that offers instant feedback to inputs such as mouse clicks and keystrokes. Also refers to programs whose screen images—a document page, for example—can be exactly duplicated by a printer.
Bibliography
Books
Biermann, Alan W. Great Ideas in Computer Science. Cambridge, iMass.: MIT Press, 1990.
Brand, Stewart. The Media Lab. New York: Viking, 1987.
Brooks, Frederick P., Jr. The Mythical Man-Month (Anniversary Edition). New York: Addison-Wesley, 1995.
Cringely, Robert X. Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Empires, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date. Menlo Park, Calif.: Addison-Wesley, 1992.
DeLamarter, Richard Thomas. Big Blue: IBM's Use and Abuse of Power. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986.
Dessauer, John H. My Years with Xerox: The Billions Nobody Wanted. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971.
Feynmann, Richard I. The Feynmann Lectures on Computing (Anthony J. G. Hay and Robin W. Allen, eds.). Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1996.
Freiberger, Paul, and Michael Swaine. Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer. Berkeley, Calif.: Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 1984.
Gelernter, David. Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology. New York: Basic Books, 1998.
Gleick, James. Genius: The Life and Science of Richard I. Feynmann. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992.
Goldberg, Adele, ed. A History of Personal Workstations. Reading, Mass.: ACM Press, 1988.
Hafner, Katie, and John Markoff. Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
Hafner, Katie, and Matthew Lyon. Where Wizards Stay up Late: The Origins of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Hodges, Andrew. Alan Turing: The Enigma. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983.
Jackson, Tim. Inside Intel. New York: Dutton, 1997.
Jacobson, Gary, and John Hillkirk. Xerox: American Samurai. New York: Macmillan, 1986.
Kearns, David T., and David A. Nadler. Prophets in the Dark. New York: HarperBusiness, 1992.
Kidder, Tracy. The Soul of a New Machine. Boston: Little, Brown, 1981.
Lammers, Susan. Programmers at Work. Redmond, Wash.: Microsoft Press, 1986.
Levy, Steven. Insanely Great. New York: Viking, 1994.
Malone, Michael S. The Big Score: The Billion-Dollar Story of Silicon Valley. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1985.
Manes, Stephen, and Paul Andrews. Gates. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1993.
Marsh, Barbara. A Corporate Tragedy. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1985.
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Metcalfe, Robert M. Packet Communications. San Jose, Calif.: Peer to Peer, 1996.
Moritz, Michael. The Little Kingdom: The Private Story of Apple Computer. New York: Morrow, 1984.
Palfreman, Jon, and Doron Swade. The Dream Machine. New York: BBC/Parkwest Publishers, 1992.
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Rheingold, Howard. Tools for Thought. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988.
Shasta, Dennis E., and Cathy A. Lazere. Out of Their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists. New York: Dub- Copernicus, 1995.
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Oral Histories
Clark, Wesley, interview by Judy O'Neill, New York, N.Y., 3 May 1990. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.
Engelbart, Douglas C., interview by Jon Eklund, Washington, D.C., 4 May 1984. National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Jobs, Steven P., interview by Daniel Morrow, Palo Alto, Calif., 20 April 1995. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Licklider, J. C. R., interview by William Aspray and Arthur L. Norberg, Cambridge, Mass., 28 October 1988. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.
Ornstein, Severo, interview by Judy O'Neill, Woodside, Cal., 6 March 1990. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.
Sutherland, Ivan, interview by William Aspray, Pittsburgh, Penn., 1 May 1989. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.
Taylor, Robert W., interview by William Aspray, Palo Alto, Calif., 28 February 1989. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.
Acknowledgments
I
n a very real sense this book was born one day in September 1996, when Steve Jobs came to lunch at the Los Angeles Times. As a technology reporter for the newspaper I was invited to join the select company. I vividly remember Jobs attired in an elegant black turtleneck, a pair of simple wire-rim glasses perched on his aquiline nose. I remember that he picked at his vegetarian lunch while flanked by two of his top lieutenants at Pixar Studios, which had recently scored a resounding success with the release of the movie Toy Story and, further, that he steadfastly turned away all questions about the burning high-tech industry issues of the day—Microsoft v. Netscape, the long decline of Apple Computer, et cetera, et cetera.
"That's my former life," he said when I tested him with one more query about the ailing Apple (this was well before his return to the company as interim chief executive). "The great thing about being involved with Pixar is that I don't have to think about any of that." With a satisfied grin he spread his arms to take in John Lasseter, the talented director of Toy Story, on his right, and Edwin Catmull, Pixar's chief technical officer, on his left.
Jobs hewed to his resolve almost to the very end of the meal. The discussion had drifted onto an oddity of computing history: that the science of computer graphics had virtually been born at the University of Utah. Catmull was an alumnus of this little-known program, as were—he rattled off a hall-of-fame roster: Jim Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics; John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe Systems; Alan Kay, the renowned proselytizer of personal computing (then at Apple). Bob Taylor, the Pentagon grantmaker who financed the birth of the Internet, had spent a year there. Several of them, he added, went on to refine their work at Xerox PARC.
That gave me one last opening. As a technology writer I could not but have noticed the glancing references to PARC that cropped up repeatedly in newspaper and magazine articles, usually describing it as the source of technology exploited by Microsoft and Apple. I had been unable to find enough written about PARC to fully satisfy my curiosity about the place. But I had learned enough to know at least one famous story—the one about Steve Jobs and his legendary demo.
"Tell me," I said. "You saw what was happening at PARC. Why do you think Xerox never was able to exploit the technology fully?"
Suddenly Toy Story and Pixar were forgotten. For the next twenty minutes Jobs was an unstoppable fount of theory and speculation on the subject of PARC. When he was through one thing was clear to me: that much about this story was still waiting to be told.
As I learned over the many months of inquiry and self-education that followed, any project of this scope is necessarily a collaborative effort. My closest collaborators were the scores of scientists, engineers, and executives now or previously associated with Xerox PARC who graciously contributed their time and memories to the foregoing chronicle. Time and again
I was astonished and gratified at the enthusiasm with which these busy men and women opened their minds and hearts to help a stranger reconstruct a cherished part of their own pasts. Even stronger than the mystique PARC experts on our own world is the one it exerts on the souls of those who worked there.
They welcomed me into their offices and homes, took time out from pressing business, provided me with invaluable research materials. They submitted to my often uninformed questioning, sometimes over multiple sessions lasting several hours each, followed by further queries by e-mail or telephone. Finally several consented to read drafts of portions of this book to correct stray errors, misconceptions, and injustices. Any that remain are my own.
For their time and recollections I would like to thank William Atkinson, Robert Belleville, David K. Biegelson, Daniel G. Bobrow, David R. Boggs, John Seely Brown, Stuart K. Card, Wesley A. Clark, Lynn Conway, Rigdon Currie, L. Peter Deutsch, Bill Duvall, Jerome I. Elkind, John Ellenby, William English, Douglas Fairbaim, Edward R. Fiala, Charles M. Geschke, Adele Goldberg, Marian Goldeen, Jacob E. Goldman, Laura Gould, William F. Gunning, Harold H. Hall, Daniel H. Ingalls, Charles Irby, Chris Jeffers, Richard E. Jones, Ted Kaehler, Alan C. Kay, Roy Lahr, Butler W. Lampson, Charles Lee, David Liddle, Edward M. McCreight, Carver Mead, Diana Meny-Shapiro, Robert M. Metcalfe, James G. Mitchell, James H. Morris, and Timothy Mott.
Also, Severo Ornstein, George E. Pake, Max Palevsky, Rod Perkins, Steve Purcell, Jef Raskin, Ron Rider, Jeff Rulifson, John F. Shoch, Richard Shoup, Charles Simonyi, Alvy Ray Smith, William J. Spencer, Robert Spinrad, Robert F. Sproull, M. Frank Squires, Gary K. Starkweather, Paul Strassmann, Bert Sutherland, Robert W. Taylor, Warren Teitelman, Lawrence G. Tesler, Charles P. Thacker, David Thomburg, Myron Tribus, John C. Urbach, Smokey Wallace, John Warnock, Barry Wessler, George M. White, and George R. White.
Geri Thoma, my agent at Elaine Markson Literary Agency in New York, contributed her confidence in this project before I was sure a project existed. Laureen Connelly Rowland, my editor at HarperBusiness, strengdiened my resolve with her enthusiasm and refined the manuscript immeasurably with her wise and elegant pen. My friends and editors at the Los Angeles Times deserve my gratitude for their forbearance over the lengthy period needed to bring this work to fruition.
My wife, Deborah, was a loving and steadfast partner in this project from beginning to end, whether the demand was for the heavy labor of transcribing interviews or for the definitive and lucid insights that alone can rescue a hopelessly snarled chapter from the hell of a weary writer's bewilderment. Lastly, I owe more than I can express to my wonderful sons, Andrew and David, who will inherit the world PARC made.Index
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