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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].
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.
That wasn't really a touchscreen. More like an approachscreen,
Ezekiel 23:20
The computer you want always costs $2500.
The economyâ(TM)s booming like never before
If you ignore anything before the 1970s, right?
Ezekiel 23:20
Xerox were geared up to do R&D, not marketing, sales, advertising, customer feedback, technical support and all the other corporate divisions required by a whole systems manufacturer. The usual product development cycle is put something out to market, get customer feedback, look at what other competitors are doing, get one step ahead of them, add new features requested by customers and marketing, then repeat.
Just look at the size of the main chassis. How would you convince office departments that they need workstations the size of office desks?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
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"?
No, the Alto was kind of already in limited production by the time the Apple team got their tour of PARC.
Xerox did license/sell the rights to some of the GUI patents to them in exchange for $150 mil. (IIRC) in Apple Stock.
You convince them the same way you convince them to buy computers that filled a room.
And, those guys at Xerox, Bell Labs, Old IBM R&D are what I compare all the "innovators and disruptors" that Silly Valley likes to call every one and every startup to and why I'm a curmudgeon with today's entrepreneurs. Sorry, selling a hyped tent or rehashing ideas from the 19th century isn't innovative.
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.
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Search for the Mother of all Demos.
You mean this one?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Wow, congratulations! At last a first post that's relevant and has a good point.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Surprised it took so many comments before someone finally stated the obvious.
#DeleteFacebook
I thought he meant this one.
#DeleteFacebook
Apple released a touch screen product years before the iPhone. The Newton.
My sig doesn't address Anons, sigs aren't visible to them.
So they predicted stack ranking, outsourcing, offshoring, open plan, and wage stagnation?
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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.