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That '70s Show: the Conference That Predicted the Future of Work (wired.com)
theodp writes: Over at Wired, Leslie Berlin writes about Futures Day at the 1977 Xerox World Conference, an invitation-only demonstration of the Alto personal computer system developed at Xerox PARC. It's an excerpt from Troublemakers: How a Generation of Silicon Valley Upstarts Invented the Future. Both Berlin's book and Brian Dear's recent The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture are shedding light on groundbreaking systems of the '70s that were ultimately done in by the less-featured but low-cost Apple II (yes, $2,638 for a system with 48 kB of RAM was 'low cost'!) and other personal computers. Interestingly, Dear notes that the Xerox Parc and PLATO teams sent people out to see and learn and exchange ideas with each other over the years. Their interactions included 'tremendous battles' over the advantages and disadvantages of mouse interfaces [Xerox] vs. touch screens [PLATO], as well as plasma displays [PLATO] vs. other, cheaper display solutions [Xerox]. As is the case with many debates, both teams proved to be "right." Apple wouldn't introduce the masses to a mouse interface until 1984 [Macintosh] and a touch screen interface until 2007 [iPhone].
Wasn't the Alto from 1973? Why did they wait four years to show it off? And I thought they only showed it off to Apple, privately? And basically sold the rights to the ideas to them because they couldn't figure out what to do with the expensive machine developed in their "dream labs"?
Also, "upstarts"? Is that the same as "startups"?
The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture
Orange Glow, so they predicted Trump?
See title
I had a Casio tc-50 calculator watch in 1983 that was touch screen. And not that pathetic bendy screen like cheap touch devices - this was a proper glass-faced capacitive touch.
I miss that watch.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
The computer you want always costs $2500.
That's not what the subject field is used for.
Red is going to put his foot up their asses.
At Stanford. Search for the Mother of all Demos.
Were these notions of computing successful because they were the best ideas? Or just because they were early enough to be adopted and fill the niche? Someday, aliens might come to Earth and show us their PCs, and we will facepalm and wonder why we didn't think of that.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
(yes, $2,638 for a system with 48 kB of RAM was 'low cost'!
Even millennials know tech gets cheaper with time.
Such stupid Slashdot crap.
Apple released a touch screen product years before the iPhone. The Newton.
My sig doesn't address Anons, sigs aren't visible to them.
As if the technology was not only known, but well-known enough to have well-understood names by the time Apple got around to usurping it. Give me an effing break.
So they predicted stack ranking, outsourcing, offshoring, open plan, and wage stagnation?
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Brain explosion time.
The right answer for the next three decades was a laser wheel mouse with two primary buttons.
The "right" answer for the next fifteen years was a 3-megapixel, 26" diagonal, 96 dpi, 4:3 aspect-ratio, monochrome screen with an 85-Hz refresh rate.