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Title: Dealers of Lightning : Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age by Michael A. Hiltzik ISBN: 0-88730-989-5 Publisher: HarperBusiness Pub. Date: 04 April, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.11 (38 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A good read about software history
Comment: This is a gripping history about key software innovations that underlie much current US economic success. These software technologies are now deeply embedded in everyday business practices and they formed a launching pad for today's computer-based communications and the Internet. As traditional US manufacturing declines in competitiveness, it is hard to imagine that the US would be enjoying its current prosperity if basic innovations like those developed by PARC and by early ARPA research had not occurred when they did.
As a technical participant in the Xerox Star commercialization effort, I worked with many of the PARC researchers described here. Hiltzik tells a very balanced and nuanced story that certainly captures the concepts, dynamics, and conflicts of that time. One can quibble with whether the participants' recollections are always fair, but Hiltzik's story about these exciting times is basically accurate with respect to the personalities and events that I knew, and he fills in a wealth of background and details that I didn't know.
This book corrects a lot of misinformation about PARC research and Xerox commercialization efforts. It is a good read for anybody interested in the history of technology. It should be required reading for everybody in research management--for many examples of what to do and what not to do. This history should also be read by anyone who believes another big leap in software technology can be achieved while research funding is cut back, universities are drained of their talent, and almost everyone competitively focuses on six month commercialization goals.
Rating: 4
Summary: AN ABSORBING PORTRAIT OF THE EARLY YEARS AT PARC
Comment: Computer history is full of great human drama and not a few myths, none so enduring as the story of Steve Jobs stealing technology from Xeroc PARC. In this absorbing book about the famous research institution, Michael Hiltzik puts his own interpretation on the legacy of PARC. He lets Xerox off the hook from the usual charges that they "blew it" when it came to exploiting the amazing inventions that came out of PARC.
But Hiltzik's book does not focus on the Jobs incident, rather he gives us portraits of the men and women whose talents and vision produced computers that were way ahead of their time. The first group of engineers working for Jack Goldman and George Pake in a warehouse across from Stanford University actually built a computer that acted much like the DEC PDP-10 that they wanted to buy. They were told they couldn't have one because Xerox had purchased rival computer-maker SDS, whose products were decidedly inferior. So the talented team simply built themselves a clone. Later, they followed Alan Kay's dream of a small personal computer and created the Alto, a true personal computer that had a mouse and graphical interface and built-in ethernet-- in 1973! Kay also created the first object-oriented language, Smalltalk, which was perfect for writing user-friendly applications for the Alto.
The number of innovations that came from PARC is truly astonishing, but none of them ever came to market. This book provides some of the answers as to why Xerox did not turn its research into profits. While pouring money into PARC, they were also having problems with their main business, which was leased copiers. The Japanese were making smaller cheaper copiers that were eating into Xerox's business markets and that was a major distraction. Xerox also lacked the means to sell computers. Their salesmen usually dealt with office managers; they knew nothing about computers.
The products created at PARC were marvelous (everyone wanted an Alto once they saw one in operation), but they were created with no thought to marketing. Each Alto was hand-built and would have to be sold for a hefty price. Xerox did sell some to the Carter administration for the government information office, but never set up a factory to build Altos.
The other problem with marketing the products from PARC was the blindness of the company, including its brilliant researchers, toward the revolution happening right outside their door with small computers. Some of their engineers, like Larry Tesler, Charles Simonyi and Bob Metcalf, did see the potential and left for greener pastures (Tesler to Apple, Simonyi to Microsoft, and Metcalf to found 3Com). But as a company, Xerox had no notion that small cheap computers were about to take the market by storm. When they finally incorporated the Alto technology into the Xerox Star, it was too big, too slow, and too expensive. IBM came out with its PC and businesses bought the cheaper product. The author gives too much credit to IBM, however. The microcomputer revolution was already in full swing and it was only the hubris of the ultra talented researchers PARC employed that kept them from seeing that it was the self-taught garage geeks, not PhD scientists with money to burn, who were the true initiators of personal computing.
As for the visit of Steve Jobs, Hiltzik says there were three visits, with progressively more encompassing demonstrations of the Alto-Smalltalk products. He says all of the participants seem to remember it differently, but Jobs has always felt the emphasis on what he learned at Xerox takes away from the talent and vision that already existed at Apple. The author says it was inevitable that Apple would do a better job of selling the public on a graphical interface than a tradition-bound bureaucratic organization like Xerox. It was simply fate that Apple brought out the Lisa and the Macintosh while Xerox brought out the doomed Star.
Rating: 5
Summary: A fascinating read
Comment: As someone who has been working in the IT field some time and a keen student of history, I approached this book with some anticipation and curiosity. I am happy to report that not only was the "story" interesting but also very enlightening. The focus of this book is a historical account of the legendary Xerox technology centre called PARC and the people who worked there. The author has done a remarkable job in making the events of interest to the reader but also take you literally inside the organisation and the thought processes driving all manner of decisions.
The story is at once inspring and tragic. Inspiring in that the centre produced some of the most incredible advances in the computing sciences ever seen, but tragic in that many of those advances never saw the light of day (at least not with a Xerox badge on them). Several things come across when reading the book: the collection of people working in the facility were of an extremely high calibre and some of the sharpest minds of the day, they also possessed (in many cases) collossal egos to go with their staggering intellect, Xerox in many cases had neither the foresight nor the wherewithal to bring these great ideas to market and that the inventions coming out of PARC were perhaps too far ahead of their time to be practical in the "real world".
In the end, as in many organisations, internal politics and ego/hubris brought down this fine institution from what it was to what it is today. I guess that was to be expected with the cast of characters involved and the inability of Xerox to understand their work. As an aside, I think the author handled the question of "did Xerox blow it" very fairly and comes across as surprisingly sympathetic to the company. I think this is reasonable, as it's very easy to be wise after the event. I think many other organisations may have acted the same way when confronted with the economic realities of the time coupled with this bleeding edge technology.
In all, I would recommend "Dealers of Lightning" to anyone curious about the history of computer science or technology in general.
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Title: Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger, Michael Swaine ISBN: 0071358927 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies Pub. Date: 29 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet by Katie Hafner, Matthew Lyon ISBN: 0684832674 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 January, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer by Douglas K. Smith ISBN: 1583482660 Publisher: iUniverse Pub. Date: 01 April, 1999 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal by M. Mitchell Waldrop, Mitchell M. Waldrop ISBN: 014200135X Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 27 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything by Steven Levy ISBN: 0140291776 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 05 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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