More about Brainerd

 Yesterday's post about Paul Brainerd focused a bit on the early days, including his first outside investment as well as the date.  In doing so, I was a bit cheeky, suggesting that the Computer History Musuem oral interview done in 2007 was in error on those two factoids.  

History has a way of being recorded, and then repeated, sometimes to the total exclusion of any revisions over time.  That doubtless will be true in this case.   Consider for example the eulogy wirtten about Brainerd for GeekWire by Todd Bishop on Feb 19,  2026, which takes vthe CHM interview irtually intact  (https://www.geekwire.com/2026/pagemaker-pioneer-paul-brainerd-1947-2026-aldus-founder-devoted-his-second-chapter-to-the-planet/).

My chary comments were not written to criticize the interviewer--au contrare--computer historians are best able to do great interviews, with modest back-checking usually.   They have a hard time contradicting the interviewee, especially if the subject has not previously had a series of equivalent interviews or fact-checks.  And for an interview done some 27 years after the fact, it is not all that surprising that Brainerd would get the year wrong by one, or the name of the first VC group.   

In addition, Brainerd provided one of the most insightful marketing research stories of our industry for the interviewer--which itself could serve to buttress many books about entrepreneurship if the authors only knew about the story.  Bishop relates this story well, taken from the excellent excerpt in the CHM interview.

So there are several points to consider from this extended example.  

1.  How do we validate oral interviews?  Because of concern for braggadocio or revenge-taking, or understated shyness or just faulty memory, historians have long been concerned about and in places wary of oral interviews.   I cover this in some depth in a monograph I wrote for the Computer History Board of Trustees in 2015 (https://www.lulu.com/shop/charles-house/digital-revolution-heritage/paperback/product-22378873.html?srsltid=AfmBOop5Db1DNvUso1lYNd-OtWySnOWrfyEUd_ZT6Jvhi145PaJqlXck&page=1&pageSize=4).

2. Now that the high-tech world has accumulated nearly 10,000 such interviews, how do we extract the powerful stories contained within them?  This is a great on-going subject, suitable for a later time.  Suffice here to note that although some details are 'suspect' due to my carping, that Todd Bishop very adroitly captured the essence of Brainerd's market research efforts and insight.  That is a key contrib ution, typical of what we aspire to, but too seldom happens.

3. "Correcting the record".   Ahh, the wistful desire.   Hard to do.  HP's origins are often proclaimed to start with selling eight audio oscillators to Disney.  HP PR is still stuck on this.   The facts are that the Disney order was nowhere near the first for the company; more importantly, it was NINE, not EIGHT, a fact that has been proven repeatedly to any and all interested folk at HP. and IGNORED, even denounced.  Ah, well.

So here let me just put some passages from the interview that might help the context for why it should be 1983 and not 1984.

I will let the record stand re the Summerhill investment (noted in The HP Phenomenon, p. 587.   https://www.amazon.com/HP-Phenomenon-Innovation-Business-Transformation/dp/0804752869)

When we first formed the company in January or thereabouts of ’84, it was essentially for the professional user.

There was an Apple branch office here in Belleview, Washington, and they had an OEM sales person there. He came and visited us in our first six weeks of being a company in a little studio apartment below the Pike Place Market, and he loaned us two prototype Macintoshes. He didn’t know us from Adam. I had called the office and set up this appointment. He showed up; he got two Macs out of his trunk, brought them into the office and said, “Here. You take them for the next six months.” So they didn’t actually come from Apple – I mean it came from Apple, but not from Cupertino. This whole relationship with Apple was based on individual Apple employees from the working level, i.e. Bruce Blumberg and a sales person. It had nothing to do with any high-level decision making on the part of Steve Jobs or anyone else at Apple. 

I started trying to raise money during the summer of 1984; I called upon 50 different venture capital firms both in Seattle and Silicon Valley and was told ‘no’ 49 out of 50 times. We got all the way to September which was our drop-dead date. We had less than $5,000 left in our bank account. Finally, we got a commitment from a group of venture capitalists in Silicon Valley – Palo Alto – that was made up of some partners who had been former Apple Computer executives, and they understood what we were trying to accomplish and why software might have value.

Note here that he says that Aldus actually started in mid to late 1983, in a little studio apartment.  All other docs except my anecdote trace the founding to 1984.  And they got two prototype MacIntoshs, weeks before the Super Bowl ad of January 22, 1984.   Must have been 1983, huh?

PageMaker would be the tool that they’d be using for that kind of publishing. It was just beyond our imagination. We started to show this in January of 1985 when the LaserWriter came out. We were there at that product launch, of course. When we started demonstrating it, people were grabbing for the sheets coming out of the LaserWriter because they couldn’t believe that we could do the quality of output with the quality of text, and that it really was coming close to what you could do with a traditional publishing system. It was then that we really began to understand how widespread the market opportunity was for desktop publishing. 

but it wasn’t as fundamental a shift in our thinking as you’re implying, perhaps, because the Macintosh with the LaserWriter was still going to be a $10,000 solution. We really underestimated how fundamental, even at $10,000, the value proposition was in terms of what PageMaker, the LaserWriter and Macintosh could do 

And it was very difficult to develop that whole interface that Apple had already done. So, we immediately started to work on PageMaker for the Macintosh

In the summer of ’84 when Macintosh unit sales weren’t doing that well. Bruce Blumberg came to me and said, “There’s an opportunity to go in front of the new president.” Steve had been pushed aside in that timeframe, or at least John Scully had come on the scene, and John wanted on his desk, from his product managers, a marketing plan. Bruce said, “I can’t do this by myself, and I want to partner with you. Can you pull together a marketing plan for desktop publishing?” So, I hired a marketing consultant locally, and in three or four weeks we put this thing together from nuts to bolts. We developed the whole marketing plan for desktop publishing for us and Apple

And the rest is history.  Brainerd drove the point abouot Desktop Publsihing, and a new era opened.  I could go on, and describe how great Persuasion was compared to PowerPoint, but that is a different topic.   Meanwhile, RIP Paul.

Paul Brainerd RIP

The obituary squib caught my eye, and gave me pause.   I knew Paul Brainerd, briefly.  https://lnkd.in/gBPmHenV brainerd-1947-2026-aldus-founder-devoted-his-second-chapter-to-the-planet/?

When I moved to Palo Alto for HP as their new Corporate Engineering Director in 1982, I had little exposure to the wider electronics and computer communities.   Yes, I had led the HP Logic Analyzer business, and in that connection met with key developers at many computer companies around their diagnostic issues.  Yes, I'd led the first computer graphics display project at HP, the HP 1300A, even earlier.  But except for a few stalwarts there, I didn't develop deep ties to any of the graphics teams.

In Colorado Springs, we were pretty remote, all things considered.

In Palo Alto, it was happening all around us.   And one day, an old colleague from HP--Tom Whitney--called me to invite me into a dinner club that purported to be a small-time investment club.  Tom was the lead manager for HP's (and the world's) first personal computer, the HP 9100A that I had used to develop the COPD thesis for the Colorado Air Pollution Control Commission in 1970.  He also was the lead manager for the subsequent HP 35A, the world's first scientific pocket calculator.  And then he left HP to become Apple's VP of Research and Development.  That assignment didn't go so well--yes, he made $60M in stock from Apple's IPO, but his team produced the ill-fated Apple III, and he was bounced out in favor of his HP protege John Couch.  Couch also foundered, leading the LISA project before Jobs took over its slimmed-down version, the MacIntosh.

Whitney proposed a small dinner group, meeting monthly starting in late 1983, where he would invite friends and colleagues to chat about what they were working on, which inevitably led to requests for investment.  Well, we did do a little bit, but it was cursory to say the least.  The group was titled SummerHill Partners, since Tom and Donna lived on Summerhill Road in Los Altos Hills.  And SHP stood for "Since HP" for Tom.

Our third speaker was a young earnest fellow named Paul Brainerd, who was an escapee from Atex, a start-up in word processing automation tools.  One of their focii was productivity for the newspaper industry, and Brainerd had been deep into that world for awhile.  When Kodak bought the computing business, circa 1981, the word processing group was terminated.  Nearly all of the team went off on their own tangents, but almost all started some version of the same business.  Brainerd was the marketing guy, and he lacked the technical chops to invent another version, so instead he focused on a 'low-ball' derivative that he thought might be of interest for small-time newspapers.

NBI in Boulder, CO (stood for Nothing but Initials) was one version, Interleaf Inc. in Cambridge, MA was the best-known and most successful for a time.   David Boucher founded Interleaf, which developed the first commercial WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) document processor.   Stephen Kirsch would later found Framemaker, which was a dominant product for a time.   Wang acquired key folk from the group, as did Lanier, and others.   

And in my role at HP Palo Alto, I had been using (and loving) the Interleaf system for my own work for a year, when Brainerd came to our dinner in late 1983, along with a colleague, Charles Ying.  The dinner group had eleven members that night, and essentially none of them understood the value of the ideas presented.  What they did understand was the beauty of a new computer shown--a preliminary MacIntosh.  This was maybe eight weeks before the famous Apple ad at the SuperBowl, announcing the new MacIntosh.  The entire group had seen the Apple Lisa, and I believe that most of them had already seen the Xerox PARC devices.   So the idea of an icon-driven screen, rather than raster-based lines of text, was not novel to this group.   The idea of WYSIWYG printing was less familiar, but not unknown--although in fact, my usage of the Interleaf system had probably given me an edge here.

The way the club worked was each of the members (we had fourteen in total) put up $50,000 to play, and the club would vote where to invest, in small chunks of $50,000 total.   We took a vote when Brainerd finished, and the vote was 2 in favor (Tom Whitney and me) and nine against (including Bill Krause, CEO of 3Com at the time; Dave Norman, founder and CEO of BusinessLand; and Walt Loewenstern, co-founder (and the L) of ROLM Inc, about to be bought by IBM.  Ying was apoplectic, sahying something like "this will be big, you guys should support it."

I stepped in and described why I was excited.  Next thing you know, the group said, "Okay."  We gave Brainerd $50,000, of which each member had a $3,500 share.  Over seeral years time, it became $12.5M when Aldus was bought by Adobe a decade later .   It was the only significant winning investment that Summerhill ever made.   So, $3,500 became $900,000!  The worst one we made was two $50,000 votes for Manny Fernandez and his brilliant Gavilan computer, plus several of us invested some additional private money (I did another $50,000 on my own).   Gavilan declared bankruptcy 30 days after our investment!!!  Talk about sucker-punched.  

The sequels are perhaps worth recording.   Tom had loaned me my entire grubstake ($50,000) to be in the club.  I had recently arrived from Colorado and a big divorce, into what even then was Palo Alto real estate woes, so discretionary money was scarce.   His terms were to pay it back from club earnings, and I had done so for half of it within a few years.  And then, a second divorce gave up half of my small share.   So, running the numbers, I wound up investing a net $75,000 ($25,000 paid to Tom to clear the original debt, and $50,000 into Gavilan), and got back (1/2)*(1/2)*(1/14)*($900,000) = $160,000 after eleven years total time, which is a whopping 7.2% compound interest--not exactly a smash hit.

The other sequel of interest was many years later, when the Computer History Museum conducted an oral interview with Paul in 2006.   And we learned that his work to get funded was indeed difficult.  Here are the relevant passages from CHM's interview (https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Brainerd_Paul/Brainerd_Paul_1.oral_history.2006.102657986.pdf)

I started trying to raise money during the summer of 1984; I called upon 50 different venture capital firms both in Seattle and Silicon Valley and was told ‘no’ 49 out of 50 times. We got all the way to September which was our drop-dead date. We had less than $5,000 left in our bank account. Finally, we got a commitment from a group of venture capitalists in Silicon Valley – Palo Alto – that was made up of some partners who had been former Apple Computer executives, and they understood what we were trying to accomplish and why software might have value. The basic reason I was told ‘no’ is that no one felt that a software company had any long-term market value; that basically anyone with an idea could come up with this in his garage, and in a matter of a weekend or two, write the software. Microsoft hadn’t gone public yet; it was still a private company, and people just didn’t see how a software company was a worthy investment. It was too risky. 

(Who was the VC?).  It was Vanguard, and the partner was Douglas DeVivo; he was on our board until we sold the company. The former Apple person was Gene Carter. So, in the summer of ’84, we raised $864,000 in one round of early-stage financing based on our business plan and a very rough prototype. The product shipped a year later. The Macintosh was introduced in January, and we shipped PageMaker 1.0 the following July. 

These passages reveal the difficulty historians have with oral interviews, when they complain that the facts are not always 'correct'.

Point 1: It wasn't 1984, but 1983.  Which shows up in the 2nd paragraph, noting that the MacIntosh introduced 'the following January' (and we all know from the 1984 SuperBowl ad when it debuted.

Point 2: It wasn't Vanguard, it was Summerhill Partners, who were indeed partially former Apple execs.  We only gave them $50,000, and then Tom and Charlie Ying called Doug DeVito to persuade hin to give Paul 'real money'.  

The facts otherwise are great, and while I mentioned these tidbits once to the CHM chairman, Len Shustek, he and I both agreed that this will have to stand as recorded.

The other thing that is fabulous in Paul's interview is the story of their 'big marketing trip'--a classic story of brilliant entrepreneurship.   But I will save that for now, and maybe put it up later or in a separate. blog.

Cheers 

RIP Vicki Hanson

 The news yesterday was sudden, surprising -- and yet it wasn't.   Vicki had always persevered, and it'd been months since I'd heard from her.   As the CEO of ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), she was tireless and devoted.   She'd come up 'through the ranks' -- even the ranks that ACM once decried as 'fake' or 'not relevant' (e.g. their early stance on graphics, on HCI {Human-Computer Interaction; or CHI, as ACM preferred to call it, putting the computer in front of the human} and even the Internet itself).  She became President in 2016, a decade ago now, and ACM CEO two years later.   

Here's the memoriam in CACM https://cacm.acm.org/news/in-memoriam-vicki-l-hanson/

Vicki's later work, beyond HCI, was bent on aiding dis-advantaged communities to be part of the computer world.  You might say that was a logical extension from her first love, and in fact I believe that it was.   Her Anita Borg honor signals that love and that devotion.

When she became CEO, I began the ACM Awards Archive project.  Though it was mostly driven and supported by Pat Ryan, ACM's redoubtable {and self-preferred 'behind the scenes'} COO, Vicki was a strong supporter.   Our project focused on previous Award winners -- I sub-titled it the PIP group (Previously Important People); Vicki wanted in addition to support and honor the many volunteers and staff who make ACM work so well.  Her view was that these folk are the real backbone of the guts of the organization.  

She was so right in that view.

When we proposed a year ago to extend the Archive work into a Virtual Hall of Fame, she was supportive, but concerned because ACM had just modified the Digital Library pricing structure and with it, a key major revenue generator for ACM.  Alas, that work with Vicki at the helm is a missed opportunity at this point.  

I know many friends have been sad to learn about Vicki's last year, and this denouement.  I am happy though that I came to know and appreciate her gifts and her contributions.

Chuck

COVID literature

 January 22, 2026--the sixth anniversary of the first COVID diagnosis in America.   Our newspaper, the San Jose Mercury-News, failed to note this.  So, too, the New York Times and the Washington Post

And then, when I went to check my sources, they say, "NOPE, it was January 20th" until you read further and it was "actually January 18" if not January 17.   Well, the first positive test was on the 17th, and January 18 was the ID verification by CDC of that case in Washington state, and on January 20 a statement was released to the public.   Most newspapers carried their first COVID story on January 22nd, 

But almost all "anniversary date" stories credit March 11th, the day WHO declared COVID to be a pandemic in its infinitre wisdom.  By that date, 40 US states had 3,121 confirmed cases, and 42 deaths.  The world had 24,924 cases in 14 countries, and 982 deaths in 10 countries on four continents.   

What do the 'databases' say?   Well, the official Johns Hopkins database lists 723 cases and 1 death by January 22.   California had 722 cases, no deaths; Washington State had one case on January 22 but no deaths, and Wisconsin had one death but no cases.  Huh?    Turns out that the CA data was retroactively assessed, and 'added' back to the original files.  This didn't happen for any other US state.  Such jiggering of the data happened in several early outbreaks as people tried to reconstruct who was sick and who died from what, before the world knew about COVID.   

So, six years in, how good are the books?  Which ones should we venerate?  

A new one just came out mid-2025, "In COVID's wake" by Stephen Macedo and Frances E. Lee, two political scientists, with great credentials.   Reviews are laudatory from people who idolize political machinations, but health credentials seem suspect.  One critical reviewer wrote "The examinations of existing epidemiology literature in imcomplete, and the conclusions are wrong. . . .  A pathetic attempt at revisionist history of epidemiology of COVID-19 by political scientists.  It is difficult to list every factoid these writers got wrong."

I covered the slim book by the great UK Statistician David Spiegelhalter (2021) in an earlier post.  One key critic wrote: "Absolutely useless . . . "

Michael Lewis penned the popular Premonition at the end of 2020.   Usually a very solid writer, Lewis was panned by many for this one: "A polemic against the government and especially against the CDC . . . (while I share some antipathy toward those views, I like the thrust of this critic's main charge).  "It is a jumble of stories that do not get to Covid until around page 177.  It reads like a hot mess.  I am sorry I slogged through it."

The Plague Year, by Lawrence Wright, late 2020.   Praised by many for its detailed first-year coverage, some found it quite biased.  One said, "Political garbage, huge public disservice. . . . I kept trying so hard to give this book a chance, but once I saw Trump's name mentioned for about the 100th time, I realized that this author was very unhinged in his dislike of Trump.  The author absolutely deserves the right to criticize the Administration's handling of the crisis, but on my opinion focused on that too much in a pandemic that was global and involved numerous global impacts, not just Trump."

Jonathan Howard just published a similar screed, "Everyone else is lying to you: a damning archive of science denial."

One of the better is "Lessons from the COVID War" by the Covid Crisis Committee.  A collection of 34 authors, these are good primary source material, but no overall story emerges.

A European writer, Richard Chambers, wrote "A State of Emergency" about the first COVID year in Ireland.   Reasonably balanced, but only about one (small) nation.

There is room for more.

One Institute joins more tightly with another

 InnovaScapes Institute has been a long-term passion for me, as many of you readers know.   We've done some fun things, some not-so-fun things, and even in places some important things.  And it seems to me that the challenges have if anything increased rather than decreased.  So there is plenty to do, even as clients have struggled with funding for projects in this strange anti-science political climate at present.

Along the way, we have worked with many clients and groups, and one such group has periodically been the Innovation Value Institute (IVI) at Maynooth University in Leixlip, Ireland, maybe twenty miles each of Dublin.

I first became acquainted with Maynooth (which is one of the four linked universities of the University of Ireland) circa 2008 or so, when I was working with a nearby Intel Corporation division on a set of collaboration tools.   I headed a group at Intel where our motto was that collaboration with the right set of tools was "Better than Being There" -- that motto earned us a lot of critique and brickbats at the time, but it also predicted many of the specific issues that have been discovered since the Zoom revolution occasioned by the COVID pandemic and consequent lockdowns and travel restrictions.

Via MediaX at Stanford, where I was the director at the time, we composed a workshop for British Petroleum and professional societies in the UK and in Ireland that we titled "Prometheus Unbound"

This workshop strongly advanced the notion that Virtual Collaboration was a tool for "everyone", not just the privileged executives at major corporations (the classic target audience for HP, Cisco, IBM, and virtually every other corporation at the time).   Recall that HP was touting their Halo solution, and Cisco their Telepresence rooms.  Even Webex was focused on the C-suite.  Four years after our workshop, Eric Yuan left Cisco in frustration (they had bought Webex in the meantime, and Yuan was the CTO, but he could not persuade Cisco to drop the big 'rooms' and to shift the target audience to an individual becoming empowered.  Yuan, helped by a retiring exec from Cisco, Dan Scheinman (who agreed with him, so Dan resigned Cisco simulataneously, and funded the start-up now known as Zoom).   

We also worked with IVI three years ago for a couple of United Nations General Assembly presentations centered around highly interactive Multiple Display environments to depict Big Data discoveries for the COVID pandemic in various settings, including of course Ireland's 26 counties.

Well, the great news for this week is that I was invited to become a Senior Innovation Fellow at IVI.  Naturally I accepted, and I look forward to some novel and impactful IVI projects that will extend our investigations and contributions in the Public Health sector through IVI's curent Stay Left, Shift Left,  10x Digital Health initiative   This initiative, described clearly in a recent IJIC article (International Journal of Integrated Care. https://ijic.org/articles/10.5334/ijic.ICIC24544. ) is a compelling story, with a lot of promise but also a wide set of challenges.  

I am honored and thrilled to be invited to join IVI, and I look forward to some very fundamental work in this arena.

Cindy and the Cheese Soufflé

 

Rummaging through some 'old papers' can be entertaining at time.   This is an extract from an August 2000 keynote presentation of mine at the HotConnects Conference at Stanford University.  I didn't publish it at the time, but it became a bit of a guidepost for the Intel Collaboratory that we commissioned soon after.   Most of the points covered have indeed been solved in the intervening 25 years, but it is surprising to me still how long that evolution required.  Herewith the paper:  

              

It sometimes takes a historical look when we seek to anticipate the future.  It is always fascinating as well to look at past visionaries, not least for the humorous miscues that they mistakenly foresaw, but more importantly for cues that they noted, but didn't yet know how to interpret.  For example, at the visionary 'look ahead fifty years' ACM '97 conference, "Beyond Computing" in San Jose (CA), there were several acute observations about the 'separateness' of the communications networks, both circuit-switched and broadcast, from the packet-switched computer data networks, and when they might merge, and indeed, whether it would matter or not.  But incredibly, there was almost no energy devoted to the Web, or to wireless, and no credence whatsoever to alternative computing architectures, such as the DSP structures that enable the panoply of Network appliances from Palm Pilots to ubiquitous cell phones.  All of these misses occurred a scant three years ago, by the leading pundits of the leading computer science society on the globe. What were they 'not thinking?'

 They certainly were 'not thinking' about everyday life at our home.  A common situation at our place is a daughter calling home during dinner preparation.   Our home, like most homes of our colleagues, is pretty technology-equipped.  We have seven computers, nine television sets or monitors, two scanners, four printers, six VCRs, three cell phones with their own numbers, and six telephone handsets in our home, four of which are 900MHz wireless sets.  In our library, we have a conferencing Sound Station, for effective conference calls, "just as at your office conference room."   We even have a video conferencing capability in our office, unconnected at the moment, but occasionally demonstrated.

Most evenings, we're in the kitchen, with 'surround' stereo softly playing, and the TV on, in the corner on moderate volume.    My wife cooks while I chatter about the day's activities.  The phone rings, and I answer it since she is busy whipping up the ingredients for a Cheese Soufllé.  This means picking up the handset, and either turning down the volume for the TV or the stereo (or both), or leaving the room so that I can hear my daughter Cindy on the other end.  Soon enough, she asks about Jenny, who deigns to answer because she is in the middle of a critical part of the soufflé preparation.   I finish the conversation, hang up, turn the stereo volume back up, and Jenny says, "Wha'd she say?"  To which I reply, "She says she's fine."   At this point, the soufflé preparation moves down the priority list.  Lots of energy and invective: "I want to know every word."   It is pointless to suggest that no mortal, certainly no father, could be expected to do such a Herculean task.   It requires only modest experimentation to discover that most wives and mothers share this perception about their spouse's inability to relate a simple conversation.

Recently, while completing construction of a new home, I suggested to my builder something more elegant to handle this issue.  One migh start with a simple switch that would allow switching the phone conversation into the stereo speakers, much like my new automobile does routinely.  Of course, you would want the caller identified before allowing the cut-over, and you might want to soften rather than abort the stereo signal, but these are small details.   When the telephone conversation ends, music resumes at the original volume.  The room should have conferencing capability so that  participation is both 'hands-free' and open to all present.  And there should be microphone pickup throughout the kitchen, so that Jenny can move about and talk, and be heard from anywhere she moves.  And we should be able to archive (e.g. save) the conversation.

To be sure, some kitchen nosies might need muting, such as water running at the sink, but echo-cancellation software and notch filters are becoming well-known and available technologies. Multiple other stationary or roaming folk should be as easily heard, with automatic selectivity and volume adjustment  for the person speaking.   Privacy is gained by simply lifting the handset.  Would Jenny be open to wearing a headset while cooking?  Would casual visitors sitting at the bar counter balk? 

I called five different vendors of video- and audio-conferencing equipment for advice on how to wire and equip my home for this Cheese Soufflé problem.  All referred me to the 'after-market' meaning that they don't sell to end-users, nor to businesses.  Instead they sell to distributors and custom installers, who tailor a solution for the hapless soul who is seeking answers in this realm (reminiscent of sagas on file about the early automotive enthusiasts, or fledgling EDP department managers and users).

I called my favorite 'after-market' installer, a premier Sound and Video custom design shop in Palo Alto (CA) which had done earlier work for us.   They have wired the homes of numerous CEOs and CTOs in Silicon Valley, names that we would all say, "yea, verily, they are important in our industry."  And their immediate response was "wow, we 've never had a request like that before.  But tell you what, our designers would love to tackle a problem like that one." 

I did the same in New Jersey (where the home is), and it took seven different companies coming out, each with referrals to their favorite 'smart consultant' before getting the guy from "New Yawk City" who had reputedly done the very best Commercial Conference Centers in Manhattan.  His quote, ignoring any wireless solution entirely, was $23,000 worth of wiring and simple switch controllers before we got to any of the eqipment needed to make it work (e.g. televisions, speakers, phones).  He had a smart quip, intended to dissuade me no doubt, that he only knew of two such homes in America, and that he himself was 'up on this' because he attends all the meaningful conferences.

One of the two homes, he averred, was Bill Gates' and the other was Craig Barrett, the president of Intel.  My retort was in like spirit, saying that if those two found themselves in my kitchen while Jenny was cooking, I'd like them at least to feel 'at home.'  He must have thought me insane.   He drove away, mumbling, without an order.  The insanity to me is that this cannot be done easily. It is technically pretty easy to do, but it is architecturally difficult because the various communication networks don't interact.  Since it is hard to do architecturally, it isn't done hardly at all, and thus it remains cost-prohibitive.

Ahh, but now, with the Web, everything can be digitized and packetized, so it should be doable.  Well, yes, and no.  Yes, technically.  No, architecturally, because everything is a conversion.  We have streaming video, we have VOIP, and we have QOS levels of service. But we don't have the paradigm of switching for the usage, and essentially, no one is designing for that model.   

The telephone companies, in their death-throes, are not chartered to provide multi-mediated home switching centers, nor do any of them believe in that.  Which is a shame, because they alone believe in two-way communications.   

The entertainment world (radio, television, movies, and music) is fixated on content, especially on its ownership, protection, and control.  The most paranoid of groups, they view users as potential thieves of their almighty content, so they religiously guard their creation, production, distribution model zealously, thwarting any illusion of an interactive, conversational, collaborative view of media for the world.

And the computing world, the newest and most innovative of the three, is primarily focused around a data-centric world-view, as PCs in the home stalled at 50% of homes vs. 97% for phones and 98% for TVs.  And we're seeing Palm Pilot usage surge, plus DSP-based cell phones.  Where might this lead?  Why cannot the technology that can pop multiple windows on your PC screen for your utility bills, phone bill, and bank account be used for more conversational roles?

In other words, a simple request: PROVDE NEW COMMUNICATIONS CAPABILITY FOR MY FAMILY's ISSUES.  More than one-third of Americans live in a state other than where they were born.   Estimates vary, but one estimate is that 80% of US households have at least one close relative living more than 300 miles away.  And when people get together, for birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, or just visits, little time is spent with extensive readings, database references, or PowerPoint slideshows.  Hugs, kisses, laughter, and clowning around dominate.  People are glad to see each other, and shouts of joy and screams of delight fill the air.  The background noise gets louder, and smiles broaden. Everyone is sad when the day must end.    Give us tools that can facilitate this feeling of togetherness when we're apart.

Notes:

1. I did not include in this HotConnects talk anything about a Video-enhanced Family Meeting, where multiple-site cameras and videographics might be invoked.  I just wanted a simple example for the audience.

2. After giving the talk, a colleague had me meet with John Sabol of Microsoft.  Sabol, a creative engineer for IBM for years, had become personal aide to Bill Gates, and among other things, was responsible for installing the 'smart home' for Gates' personal residence, cited by the NYC consultant.  Sotto voce, Sabol shared that "it doesn't work as well as you'd think.   It required lots of custom software drivers. and they continually need debugging."

I failed to mention to the NYC consultant or to Sabol that my wife had worked closely with Steve Jobs at Apple, that I was currently working for Intel's executive committee on collaboration projects, and that we both knew and worked with Gates on occasion as well.    The good news was that Intel did allow me and my team to create Project Miramar, and the Intel Collaboratory research program over the next few years.  And of course Steve Jobs created the marvelous iPhone a mere seven years later, while Eric Yuan pioneered Zoom a dozen years downstream.  So we are better off today. But my chief goal--to handle the Cheese Soufflé phone call interruption--remains.  Sigh.

California Crazy

 "My gawd, they look old," said my brother's widow, Diane.

I recognized few people; one espied me and delightedly greeted me--"Welcome, Jim," she wheezed."

"Jim?" I thought,  Am I that unrecognizable?

My wife Jenny declined to attend my 60th high school reunion in a town she'd never known.  Diane, though, was born and raised here, so she knew more of the folk in my class, three years ahead of her, than I ever had, since I only arrived in agricultural La Habra in my sophomore high school year.

The thirty alumni of the La Habra class of 1958 gathered for dinner Sept 28, 2018.  Why am I only reporting this now?   Because I just found the notes, as we prepare to move back to California from Oregon to be nearer to family in our dotage.

That night, canes were prominent, walkers evident, health issues topped the conversation.  But laughter abounded, hugs were ubiquitous, old animosities forgotten, and wonder of wonders--great ideas for today's students flowed freely.  The best IMHO was "never confuse Preparation H with toothpaste."

Americans are joiners, members of clubs and associaiton sof every kind and description.  Some clubs thrive for years, while others arise and ebb over faddish goals.   Much of America's greatness and magnanimity derives from generosity and charity that flows from religiouis and secular groups, clubs, societies, organizations and associations in every corner of America.

Some clubs are constantly, inevitably, shrinking.  Think for example about the DeSoto owners club.  A high school class, once graduated, can never grow.  Our club members numbered 225 all told, with 198 'graduating on time.'   Nearly one third have died (7 years ago), not so bad if you think that all the rest of us are beating America's average lifespans for both men and women handily.

 You don't choose to join some clubs--if you graduated with a high school class, you are a member of that group whether or not you ever choose to attend any events.   It is possible to be a member of a group that never convenes, whose members may not realized that they share membership.  Ditto for companies.  Hewlett-Packard started in 1939--the date is irrevocable, so that company by definition is in a group whose origins will always predate World War II.  

For some reason, I got enthused later that night about this group in which I was eating dinner--I thought of them as Ornery Bastards--they've seen it all, they've lived it all, and they can scarcely believe the results of California's growth over eight decades of evolution, innovation, and social change.

I knew a fellow once who actually titled him small group of friends, Yrenro Dratsabs, pronounced Y-Reen-Ro Drat-Sabs, which is Ornery Bastards spelt backwards.   

Of the thirty attendees that night, 5 were born elsewhere than California.   I started musing about how many Californians today were actually born in California before WW II.  The group, however large it was at some point (say, 1940), is clearly been shrinking ever since.   

The next day, I did some noodling on the subject.  California population in 1940 was 6.9 million folk, up from 5.7 million in 1930.   Given the lure of Hollywood, plus migrations described in Grapes of Wrath, my conclusion is that only about 40% of the 6.9 million were actually born in California.  And of those, only a third were under 15 years old in 1940.  So the cohort we are trying to describe here starts with roughly 900,000 to one million folk who would have had a chance to be in our current group.

Using the demographic for our own high school graduating class, roughly 40% have moved away--a statistic seldom mentioned about Americans is that Westerners are much more mobile than Easterners or Midwestern folk.  28% of our class had passed away, but this is the 'last year' of that 15 year cohort, for which on average more than 65% have departed the world of the living.

Taking these two factors together, the 900,000 cohort has shrunk by this point to about 180,000 living native Californians born before World War II.  This computes to about 4 people in 1,000 in California who belong to this group which is now shrinking faster than at any earlier time.

And a few of them started with the flappers and the chnchilla coats and the speak-easies of the late 1920;s, to build the land "of fruits and nuts" and the high-tech leadership of aircraft and war tools in Southern California and the personal computer, WorldWideWeb, and iPhone from Silicon Valley, not to metntion an avant garde approach to societal issues of every stripe.  How to capture these changes and emotions?  An impossible task at one level, but one wonders if vignettes centered around specific ideas, individuals, careers, and towns could provide an anchor for each of us to appreciate more deeply the past eight decades of California in the American pantheon.

Such an effort would indeed be California Crazy.