[HN Gopher] 50 Years Later, We're Still Living in the Xerox Alto...
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50 Years Later, We're Still Living in the Xerox Alto's World
Author : samizdis
Score : 28 points
Date : 2023-03-01 20:14 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| kpgraham wrote:
| In the early 1980s, I got a job at Western Union (the old telecom
| company, not the thing it became). I was programming special
| reports in 4GL languages like RAMIS and MARK IV plus a little
| COBOL, and I was asked at one point to see if I could find a use
| for the Xerox Star, a descendant of the Alto. It was the first
| time I had ever heard of a mouse, and I had never seen a real GUI
| before. The system was very cool, but my experience was that it
| was best used as a word processor and typesetting machine. It had
| a programming environment, but I did have a language manual and
| was never able to write any programs for it.
|
| I loved the machine, and even wrote part of a short story using
| the word processor. They moved it to corporate headquarters after
| two weeks, so I did not get very far with it, but I remember
| loving the experience. Windows was a poor substitute to the feel
| of the Star interface.
| Aloha wrote:
| This is an excellent book explaining the wonders of Xerox PARC
| and what they wrought for us all. It also explains succinctly why
| and how Xerox failed to monetize all of the innovations created
| within. (Their sales force didn't know how to sell something
| without a lease and a per-imprint charge (where's the click), and
| management didn't really understand why what PARC created was
| important or how to monetize it. Also, the people at PARC had
| some measure of trouble knowing how to commercialize anything.)
|
| I read the book at a 17 year old shortly after it came out, and
| found it very very compelling.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer...
|
| Also, here is a thread about the book with Alan Kay -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22379275
|
| Another thread with Albert Cory is here -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31626413
| johnea wrote:
| I saw one of these in the early 1980s at a Xerox engineering
| facility in LA.
|
| It was shocking!
|
| They also had a LAN where H/W engineers submitted their
| (graphically captured) schematics to the in-house PCB fab, via
| electronic transfer.
|
| A week or two later, their prototype PCBs would arrive via the
| mail delivery robot!!! I'm not kidding, the robot would follow
| it's route and beep in front of an individual's office when they
| had mail on the cart.
|
| It was WAY more back-to-the-future than any bullshit dispensed by
| M$ and Goggle today.
|
| And WHY haven't we advanced beyond the human/computer interface
| introduced 50 years ago? Quite simple really: technical
| innovation is not seen as driving shareholder value.
|
| Why should a company invent something new when its "more
| productive" to just squeeze their vendors, employees and
| customers more tightly?
|
| This is really in the same vein as M$ brain damaging billions of
| people into thinking "this is what a computer is".
|
| There are no current trends in opposition of this corporate
| domination.
|
| If you think housing, economic equity, or employee rights are
| trampled today, just wait. It's only going to get worse, until
| the mass of the population wakes up to who is actually screwing
| them!
|
| It wasn't hippy tree huggers that sent all US manufacturing to
| China. undermining the entire US workforce, and leading to the
| current situation. Where those same assholes are now crying about
| the advancement of Chinese efforts to enact it's own world
| domination. CEOs paid for that rise in Chinese aggression by
| buying the crack of products produced with cheap slave labor.
| While continuing to dumb down the US population, and sell the
| same computer that Xerox didn't know what to do with 50 years
| ago.
|
| Prepare yourself, it's only going to get worse...
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| and stay off my lawn!
|
| i also wonder at the amount of DARPA/DoD/secret funds that went
| into the early advances, and where they are now (a cia guy told
| me they saved Sun from bankruptcy early on by buying a bunch of
| machines, Smalltalk's killer app was a hyperlinked encyclopedia
| created by the CIA, etc )
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