Two posits:
1. the Internet is one of the epochal events in civilization's history
2. It happened "overnight"
Two questions:
A. Name three companies most responsible for this
B. Name five people most responsible for this
I posited these two points, and asked these two questions, of twenty ad hoc focus groups in 2013.
Write down YOUR answers, and we'll talk about 'my results' in the next post
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Infrastructure creation takes LOTS of folk
There's a great belief on the part of journalists and analysts that "the great man theory of evolution" is true. Enough that the books about 'treat companies' such as IBM, Intel, Cisco, Boeing, and HP, tend to focus on the leadership (see the latest re Zuckerberg). And, in many respects, they are correct.
The recent movie, Lincoln, or the insightful Saving Mr. Banks, certainly give us perspective that that ineluctable quality of bold leadership matters.
But it is also true that minions are valuable, and very often they are key. Take Intel for example. Intel's 'corporate history' is mostly told through stories about its founders, Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce, and its energetic forceful leader Andy Grove. Once in a while, the invention of the microcomputer by Ted Hoff and some others is told parenthetically.
The really big story usually told (Grive himself popularized this version) is that Intel (read Intel leadership) missed the significance of the micro processor, and when the Japanese onslaught came on strong in 1985 and created a crisis, Grove was smart engouh and bold enough to talk Gordon into switching horses, so to speak.
What this story fails to outline clearly is that the handwriting had been on the wall at Intel for seven years, and legions of folk soldiered on without top management support -- in fact, with opprobrium actually -- to have the micro 'ready' for its time in the sun. Bill Davidow, Phil Kaufman, Dave House (no relation to me, although we joke that he's my older brother), Stirling Hou and many many others endured, and after a mere fifteen years, they were 'heard'. But you never see that story in print, do you?
The paper by the Internet Society mentioned in the two previous posts does a good job of outlining the fact that it wasn't just Al Gore who invented the Internet, but also the fact that it wasn't just Cerf, Kahn and a few cohorts either. It was myriads of folk, at lots of places.
The key thing was the conceptual design of the Internet was handled somewhat differently--it actually was conceived to be 'inclusive' of lots of uncoordinated efforts, purposely. When's the last time you heard of that as a major design principle?
The recent movie, Lincoln, or the insightful Saving Mr. Banks, certainly give us perspective that that ineluctable quality of bold leadership matters.
But it is also true that minions are valuable, and very often they are key. Take Intel for example. Intel's 'corporate history' is mostly told through stories about its founders, Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce, and its energetic forceful leader Andy Grove. Once in a while, the invention of the microcomputer by Ted Hoff and some others is told parenthetically.
The really big story usually told (Grive himself popularized this version) is that Intel (read Intel leadership) missed the significance of the micro processor, and when the Japanese onslaught came on strong in 1985 and created a crisis, Grove was smart engouh and bold enough to talk Gordon into switching horses, so to speak.
What this story fails to outline clearly is that the handwriting had been on the wall at Intel for seven years, and legions of folk soldiered on without top management support -- in fact, with opprobrium actually -- to have the micro 'ready' for its time in the sun. Bill Davidow, Phil Kaufman, Dave House (no relation to me, although we joke that he's my older brother), Stirling Hou and many many others endured, and after a mere fifteen years, they were 'heard'. But you never see that story in print, do you?
The paper by the Internet Society mentioned in the two previous posts does a good job of outlining the fact that it wasn't just Al Gore who invented the Internet, but also the fact that it wasn't just Cerf, Kahn and a few cohorts either. It was myriads of folk, at lots of places.
The key thing was the conceptual design of the Internet was handled somewhat differently--it actually was conceived to be 'inclusive' of lots of uncoordinated efforts, purposely. When's the last time you heard of that as a major design principle?
Infrastructure creation is not a simple task
The development of the Internet is one of those Infrastructure Creations that by now has affected at least half of the world's population directly, and nearly everyone indirectly.
One advantage the creators had was that they were dealing in a near vacuum rather than modifying or adapting older communication networks. Thus, they didn't try to run the Internet (at first) on radio or television networks, nor for that matter on the telephone networks. Even so, the design was not easy.
For insight into the difficulty, I'd recommend a brief (20 pp) paper, titled "A brief history of the Internet" written by eight of the original designers. You can see it at
While it is a great tour through some of the issues, it lacks the "first person" angst that often accompanies such work. Especially the frustrations when you 'know you are right, but no one is listening' or worse, others are actively trying to sabotage your work for personal gain.
In this vein, I'd like to recommend a 'new' web-based 'book' called "The history of Computer Communications: 1968-1988" by Jim Pelkey.
You can access it directly from http://www.historyofcomputercommunications.info/.
I first met Pelkey in 1984 (propitious year, don't you think, with the Apple MacIntosh launch on January 23rd of that year, thirty years ago). He was the new CEO of Sorcim, a company building a very fast spreadsheet to compete with Visicalc (doomed due to Lotus 1-2-3 hitting the street almost simultaneously). Sorcim was a name derived from reversing the spelling of MICROS, which appeared in the mirrored image of a magazine cover on the airplane windowpane for the founder Richard Frank.
Pelkey couldn't grasp, as a novice Venture Capitalist, what all the hysteria was in the 1986/87 timeframe, over networks, and in particular where to put his investments. So he launched a personal quest, to interview lots of folk in the maelstrom and see if that gave any clues.
The result was 85 interviews, which are just now becoming available for wider readership. They are a true testament to the value of getting the info 'from the horse's mouth'. See for example the interview with Phil Kaufman, who was an unknown collaborator with Bob Metcalfe and Gordon Bell on the new Ethernet standard in the early 80's.
Kaufman died prematurely of a heart attack on a trip to Japan for his company Silicon Compilers not long after this interview. He is recalled today by the EDA Industry Award in his name for the best designers of CAE and EDA equipment in the world -- an infrastructure world so arcane that 99.99% of the world has no clue what it is about, even though at least 70% of our material goods are produced by its tools.
The interview reveals some very intriguing insights, in particular about the flawed "standards" process that 'the world' trusts, called IEEE standards, and how large corporations take full advantage of the mythology about this process. Enough that IBM nearly blocked the Internet standard, a story not often seen in print, but quite true for those of us who lived it.
One advantage the creators had was that they were dealing in a near vacuum rather than modifying or adapting older communication networks. Thus, they didn't try to run the Internet (at first) on radio or television networks, nor for that matter on the telephone networks. Even so, the design was not easy.
For insight into the difficulty, I'd recommend a brief (20 pp) paper, titled "A brief history of the Internet" written by eight of the original designers. You can see it at
While it is a great tour through some of the issues, it lacks the "first person" angst that often accompanies such work. Especially the frustrations when you 'know you are right, but no one is listening' or worse, others are actively trying to sabotage your work for personal gain.
In this vein, I'd like to recommend a 'new' web-based 'book' called "The history of Computer Communications: 1968-1988" by Jim Pelkey.
You can access it directly from http://www.historyofcomputercommunications.info/.
I first met Pelkey in 1984 (propitious year, don't you think, with the Apple MacIntosh launch on January 23rd of that year, thirty years ago). He was the new CEO of Sorcim, a company building a very fast spreadsheet to compete with Visicalc (doomed due to Lotus 1-2-3 hitting the street almost simultaneously). Sorcim was a name derived from reversing the spelling of MICROS, which appeared in the mirrored image of a magazine cover on the airplane windowpane for the founder Richard Frank.
Pelkey couldn't grasp, as a novice Venture Capitalist, what all the hysteria was in the 1986/87 timeframe, over networks, and in particular where to put his investments. So he launched a personal quest, to interview lots of folk in the maelstrom and see if that gave any clues.
The result was 85 interviews, which are just now becoming available for wider readership. They are a true testament to the value of getting the info 'from the horse's mouth'. See for example the interview with Phil Kaufman, who was an unknown collaborator with Bob Metcalfe and Gordon Bell on the new Ethernet standard in the early 80's.
Kaufman died prematurely of a heart attack on a trip to Japan for his company Silicon Compilers not long after this interview. He is recalled today by the EDA Industry Award in his name for the best designers of CAE and EDA equipment in the world -- an infrastructure world so arcane that 99.99% of the world has no clue what it is about, even though at least 70% of our material goods are produced by its tools.
The interview reveals some very intriguing insights, in particular about the flawed "standards" process that 'the world' trusts, called IEEE standards, and how large corporations take full advantage of the mythology about this process. Enough that IBM nearly blocked the Internet standard, a story not often seen in print, but quite true for those of us who lived it.
Infrastructure failures make headlines
When the San Bruno gas explosion killed several folk and destroyed scores of homes near the San Francisco airport three years ago, it launched an investigation into "how could this happen?" The results weren't pretty, bespeaking a woeful lack of maintenance and attention to long0standing issues.
When the Christmas season featured, among other things, a breach of security for 40 million Target customers via credit card number theft, it launched an investigation of "how could this happen?"
When the ObamaCare website went live in September 2013, and traffic snafus, design flaws, and other software gremlins hit, it launched a political onslaught and investigation into "how could this happen?"
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg.
Infrastructure--how things actually operate 'behind the scenes'--never is very sexy, seldom gets adequate funding, and rarely wins plaudits if done well. Let it fail, though, and all hell breaks loose.
Infrastructure design and deployment is hard work, low recognition (except for negatives), and of necessity designed to be a frustrating, highly interactive and complex task for all but the simplest tasks.
The rewards are very seldom measured in terms of stock options, cover stories, or hero badges--quite unlike expectations that starter kids at Facebook or Twitter might hold.
Why would anyone sign up?
For the answer to that question, there is a superb article, written by eight of the original Internet designers (Cerf, Kahn, et al) at
When the Christmas season featured, among other things, a breach of security for 40 million Target customers via credit card number theft, it launched an investigation of "how could this happen?"
When the ObamaCare website went live in September 2013, and traffic snafus, design flaws, and other software gremlins hit, it launched a political onslaught and investigation into "how could this happen?"
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg.
Infrastructure--how things actually operate 'behind the scenes'--never is very sexy, seldom gets adequate funding, and rarely wins plaudits if done well. Let it fail, though, and all hell breaks loose.
Infrastructure design and deployment is hard work, low recognition (except for negatives), and of necessity designed to be a frustrating, highly interactive and complex task for all but the simplest tasks.
The rewards are very seldom measured in terms of stock options, cover stories, or hero badges--quite unlike expectations that starter kids at Facebook or Twitter might hold.
Why would anyone sign up?
For the answer to that question, there is a superb article, written by eight of the original Internet designers (Cerf, Kahn, et al) at
It describes the enthusiasm, the drive, the dedication and the 'noble goals' of the creators in a way that I think would be good material for teachers wishing to have some positive stories about 'why STEM'
Infrastructure Rules of Thumb
Our five rules of thumb for INFRASTRUCTURE
1. Infrastructure seldom makes headlines except when it fails
2. Infrastructure creation is not a simple task (ask the High-Speed Rail advocates about this)
3. Infrastructure contributions are seldom the result of one or a few people, except as catalysts
4. Infrastructure contributors get less recognition than just about all other creative designers
5. Infrastructure is seldom recognized as such until very late in its evolution
1. Infrastructure seldom makes headlines except when it fails
2. Infrastructure creation is not a simple task (ask the High-Speed Rail advocates about this)
3. Infrastructure contributions are seldom the result of one or a few people, except as catalysts
4. Infrastructure contributors get less recognition than just about all other creative designers
5. Infrastructure is seldom recognized as such until very late in its evolution
An added focus for InnovaScapes Institute
Well, here it is, 2014 already
Time to update our website (might be a little while) and talk a bit about where our energy and focus has been of late
We've been involved with a project stimulated by the Computer History Museum and Cisco Systems for much of the past year, wherein the concern became one about 'how much of the Cisco story has been saved' now that the company is approaching its 30th year.
Due to our work (Ray Price and I) on the HP Phenomenon book (which is about to go OUT OF PRINT, by the way), we were invited to comment on the project.
Our offer was to conduct a preview of available materials, several focus groups of outsiders re their view of Cisco's contribution to the rapid emergence and deployment of the Internet, and then structure some preliminary interviews to elicit the undiscovered or under-represented themes that could benefit from an in-depth study.
The surprise, for Cisco leadership and ourselves, was how seldom Cisco's name arose in some twenty focus groups, even compared with names like Equatorial Communications and Vitalink, names I'd not encountered much in the past twenty-five years. It turns out that infrastructure, even something as big as routers, doesn't make it into cocktail party conversation or as memorable 'who did what' stories.
I'll save for a later post what this might mean for that project, but here I want to point out something that we've seen in several incipient projects over the past year.
1. Infrastructure seldom makes headlines except when it fails
2. Infrastructure creation is not a simple task (ask the High-Speed Rail advocates about this)
3. Infrastructure contributions are seldom the result of one or a few people, except as catalysts
4. Infrastructure contributors get less recognition than just about all other creative designers
5. Infrastructure is seldom recognized as such until very late in its evolution
Let me give some specific examples
A. The Internet is infrastructure. It has no company managing it, it is essentially a profitless 'system', and the creators are almost innumerable, with only a few names really 'tied' to it (e.g. Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Len Kleinrock, Bob Kahn, and lightly, Doug Engelbart). And while there are plenty of books about aspects of the Internet, it is surprising to us that some "BIG" stories seem omitted. There are, by our count, at least forty books with chapters or full books devoted to Cisco alone, never mind Wellfleet, Bay Networks, SynOptics, and a myriad other LAN and WAN companies. And yet, the topical "miss" is amazing to us. Why? Because historians haven't yet focused here--the work is mostly from journalists concerned with the greatness of 'the leaders' or the analysts trying to focus on the next 10x money gains.
B. GPS is infrastructure. Your iPhone, your camera, and your car all figure out 'where you are' on a dynamic Global Positioning basis, within a few feet. Imagine if Chris Columbus had had this, or even better, Rene LaSalle could have found New Orleans on his fourth and fatal trip to America instead of the cannibalistic Karankawa Indians of the Texas Gulf Coast. Maybe Trimble Navigation, or Brad Parkinson, or JPL, should have more fame and recognition for how all of this happened--who knows? But the key is the players are all still alive, and no one to our knowledge has tried to collate "this story" At less than $1 per device today, this is important 'commodity' technology but not destined to ring the bells on the New York Stock Exchange ever again (10 billion people with 10 GPS devices each isn't one year's current revenue for HP, for example).
C. Electronic instrumentation -- the HP, Agilent, and now Keysight stories, plus Tektronix, Fluke, Beckman, General Radio and others -- has changed the scientific and engineering worlds incredibly. Yet the 'stories' are buried, or found in obscure places occasionally, at best. Who might care? Does it matter? Our assertion is YES, these are the kinds of things that excite kids to want to become designers and creators of the 'next infrastructure' -- this is what STEM is about, not how to become a Steve Jobs entrepreneur but rather how to become a contributing member of a truly important design team on a major topic of interest for society.
D. "Non-stop computing," popularized by Tandem Computers forty years ago, is more than a slogan--it is the highly reliable backbone of the world's stock markets, banking systems, security networks, and deployment of such things as gasoline, medicines, and foodstuffs, not to mention tracking their safety and quality. This is not the stuff of iPads and Wintel PCs--this is enterprise computing writ large. Go try to find some books on this, and you'll quickly come scratch. This is NOT a history of Tandem Computers; rather, it is a history of ideas, efforts, learnings, and lessons around a foundational piece of our society--how do you design an interoperable, trustable, reliable backbone? Think here for a moment about the simple issue that Target faced over the Christmas holidays about incursion of their Credit Card info for forty million Americans--wow! And think also about the North Korean saber-rattling and their headstart over the Iranians in both nuclear technology and space launch vehicles. These are not trivial questions, would you agree?
E. CAE, or EDA, or CAD/CAM These are all buzzwords for tools that emerged to help designers design ... well, just about everything. The big buzz right now is 3-D printing, prized for the ability to deposit ink, plastic, or organics in some three-dimensional pattern, kind of a LaserJet printer on steroids. Without the geometric toolkits of CAE history, this would be impossible. Without the incredibly sophisticated EDA tools for placing transistor cells on a silicon wafer, the 10 billion device microcomputer chips that Intel sells to TI or Apple or HP for less than one ten-millionth of a cent per device, we'd not have had our iPhones, iPads, or Internet world AT ALL, let alone at some reduced capability. So where are the recognitions and the insights from Mentor Graphics, or Cadence, or Applied Materials in our historical literature, let alone in our celebration of how to interest our youth in careers such as these tool builders pursued?
F. Even the 'big stories' (e.g. Intel) tend to aggrandize only the leaders. The books on Intel for example extol the virtues (or decry the vices) of the founders -- Moore and his law, Noyce and his flamboyant style, and ascetic Grove. There are short chapters about Ted Hoff, even shorter about Federico Faggin, and a squib or two about Justin Rattner. But the seventy five "Fellows" that Intel honored internally haven't ever been heard from by anyone else. Ditto for HP, Boeing, IBM, Motorola, Proctor and Gamble, you name it.
Well, that sort of "states the case"
What do we propose to do about it?
Stay tuned
Time to update our website (might be a little while) and talk a bit about where our energy and focus has been of late
We've been involved with a project stimulated by the Computer History Museum and Cisco Systems for much of the past year, wherein the concern became one about 'how much of the Cisco story has been saved' now that the company is approaching its 30th year.
Due to our work (Ray Price and I) on the HP Phenomenon book (which is about to go OUT OF PRINT, by the way), we were invited to comment on the project.
Our offer was to conduct a preview of available materials, several focus groups of outsiders re their view of Cisco's contribution to the rapid emergence and deployment of the Internet, and then structure some preliminary interviews to elicit the undiscovered or under-represented themes that could benefit from an in-depth study.
The surprise, for Cisco leadership and ourselves, was how seldom Cisco's name arose in some twenty focus groups, even compared with names like Equatorial Communications and Vitalink, names I'd not encountered much in the past twenty-five years. It turns out that infrastructure, even something as big as routers, doesn't make it into cocktail party conversation or as memorable 'who did what' stories.
I'll save for a later post what this might mean for that project, but here I want to point out something that we've seen in several incipient projects over the past year.
1. Infrastructure seldom makes headlines except when it fails
2. Infrastructure creation is not a simple task (ask the High-Speed Rail advocates about this)
3. Infrastructure contributions are seldom the result of one or a few people, except as catalysts
4. Infrastructure contributors get less recognition than just about all other creative designers
5. Infrastructure is seldom recognized as such until very late in its evolution
Let me give some specific examples
A. The Internet is infrastructure. It has no company managing it, it is essentially a profitless 'system', and the creators are almost innumerable, with only a few names really 'tied' to it (e.g. Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Len Kleinrock, Bob Kahn, and lightly, Doug Engelbart). And while there are plenty of books about aspects of the Internet, it is surprising to us that some "BIG" stories seem omitted. There are, by our count, at least forty books with chapters or full books devoted to Cisco alone, never mind Wellfleet, Bay Networks, SynOptics, and a myriad other LAN and WAN companies. And yet, the topical "miss" is amazing to us. Why? Because historians haven't yet focused here--the work is mostly from journalists concerned with the greatness of 'the leaders' or the analysts trying to focus on the next 10x money gains.
B. GPS is infrastructure. Your iPhone, your camera, and your car all figure out 'where you are' on a dynamic Global Positioning basis, within a few feet. Imagine if Chris Columbus had had this, or even better, Rene LaSalle could have found New Orleans on his fourth and fatal trip to America instead of the cannibalistic Karankawa Indians of the Texas Gulf Coast. Maybe Trimble Navigation, or Brad Parkinson, or JPL, should have more fame and recognition for how all of this happened--who knows? But the key is the players are all still alive, and no one to our knowledge has tried to collate "this story" At less than $1 per device today, this is important 'commodity' technology but not destined to ring the bells on the New York Stock Exchange ever again (10 billion people with 10 GPS devices each isn't one year's current revenue for HP, for example).
C. Electronic instrumentation -- the HP, Agilent, and now Keysight stories, plus Tektronix, Fluke, Beckman, General Radio and others -- has changed the scientific and engineering worlds incredibly. Yet the 'stories' are buried, or found in obscure places occasionally, at best. Who might care? Does it matter? Our assertion is YES, these are the kinds of things that excite kids to want to become designers and creators of the 'next infrastructure' -- this is what STEM is about, not how to become a Steve Jobs entrepreneur but rather how to become a contributing member of a truly important design team on a major topic of interest for society.
D. "Non-stop computing," popularized by Tandem Computers forty years ago, is more than a slogan--it is the highly reliable backbone of the world's stock markets, banking systems, security networks, and deployment of such things as gasoline, medicines, and foodstuffs, not to mention tracking their safety and quality. This is not the stuff of iPads and Wintel PCs--this is enterprise computing writ large. Go try to find some books on this, and you'll quickly come scratch. This is NOT a history of Tandem Computers; rather, it is a history of ideas, efforts, learnings, and lessons around a foundational piece of our society--how do you design an interoperable, trustable, reliable backbone? Think here for a moment about the simple issue that Target faced over the Christmas holidays about incursion of their Credit Card info for forty million Americans--wow! And think also about the North Korean saber-rattling and their headstart over the Iranians in both nuclear technology and space launch vehicles. These are not trivial questions, would you agree?
E. CAE, or EDA, or CAD/CAM These are all buzzwords for tools that emerged to help designers design ... well, just about everything. The big buzz right now is 3-D printing, prized for the ability to deposit ink, plastic, or organics in some three-dimensional pattern, kind of a LaserJet printer on steroids. Without the geometric toolkits of CAE history, this would be impossible. Without the incredibly sophisticated EDA tools for placing transistor cells on a silicon wafer, the 10 billion device microcomputer chips that Intel sells to TI or Apple or HP for less than one ten-millionth of a cent per device, we'd not have had our iPhones, iPads, or Internet world AT ALL, let alone at some reduced capability. So where are the recognitions and the insights from Mentor Graphics, or Cadence, or Applied Materials in our historical literature, let alone in our celebration of how to interest our youth in careers such as these tool builders pursued?
F. Even the 'big stories' (e.g. Intel) tend to aggrandize only the leaders. The books on Intel for example extol the virtues (or decry the vices) of the founders -- Moore and his law, Noyce and his flamboyant style, and ascetic Grove. There are short chapters about Ted Hoff, even shorter about Federico Faggin, and a squib or two about Justin Rattner. But the seventy five "Fellows" that Intel honored internally haven't ever been heard from by anyone else. Ditto for HP, Boeing, IBM, Motorola, Proctor and Gamble, you name it.
Well, that sort of "states the case"
What do we propose to do about it?
Stay tuned
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Homage to Doug Engelbart
We had a fete to commemorate Doug Engelbart's life at the Computer History Museum on Monday evening, the 45th anniversary of "The Mother of All Demos" It was a packed house, with luminaries speaking (albeit a bit long), and much ado about one of the quirkiest iconoclasts I've ever known.
Ted Nelson, the Xanadu futurist and scourge of many a computer industry manager, gave the most eloquent talk, which you can see at http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/an-homage-to-douglas-engelbart-and-a-critique-of-the-state-of-tech/?_r=1&
Ted caught the spirit of Doug, I felt (and so did most of the audience, based on the applause) when he said: "This is weird. Doug was dumped by ARPA, dumped by SRI, shunned by XeroxPARC, and spent his last thirty years wandering in exile. And here we are, grasping at shreds of his robe, to say 'we're carrying on his vision'."
I first met Doug in 1966, when a young product marketing kid, Paul Schmidt, at HP took me (at a ripe old age of 25) over to meet Doug at SRI (then still on campus in a smallish lab). Doug had me operate the chordic keyboard, the foot treadle and the knee lever. It was like you could be an impresario if you were truly multidextrous.
Doug bought an HP 1300A from me, as did Alan Kay up at University of Utah and a few others ahead of their time. As the first commercially available computer graphics display, it was a pretty strange box to behold, and at $2,000, hardly an insignificant purchase. This was the box that later earned me Dave Packard's gratuitous "Medal of Defiance" since he had ordered it to be cancelled.
We crossed paths again circa 1982 when I organized HP's first Coporate Engineering function, and we were trying to figure out how to get disparate parts of HP to talk together. Through my wife at the time, I met Patty Burbank, a first cousin of Doug's wife -- yes, in a hot tub, as befits the Silicon Valley aura of the day-- and she said she'd help reconnect us.
A couple of years later, Bert Raphael and his team (notably Walt Underwood and Mark Laubach with Dave Farber as advisor) bought the first commercially sold router from a fledgling company named cisco systems (small letters, no caps). A.nd built virtually the first multi-mediated communications rail for any company on the globe, 2nd largest email network of the day acc. to one pundit. And HP was like the 60th largest Fortune 500 company, so this wasn't exactly "standard procedure' yet
Bert and I hired Doug then to try to implement his Augmented Knowledge ideas, which we did via a group of HP Productivity Engineers (longish story here, to be told later).... That encounter started a deeper association for me with Doug that lasted the rest of his life. Consequently, I co-hosted the 40th anniversary of "the Mother of all Demos" at Stanford with Media X in 2008, meeting many of the giants in this sub-culture.
Thinking about all of this on Monday night, I just had to marvel at the folk who turned out--and reflect on how all of these ideas, the contention, the arguments, the insane competitive wars, and the camaraderie all combined to change the world--maybe even for the better?
I was proud to know him, and thrilled to have had the privilege. May he rest in peace.
Ted Nelson, the Xanadu futurist and scourge of many a computer industry manager, gave the most eloquent talk, which you can see at http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/an-homage-to-douglas-engelbart-and-a-critique-of-the-state-of-tech/?_r=1&
Ted caught the spirit of Doug, I felt (and so did most of the audience, based on the applause) when he said: "This is weird. Doug was dumped by ARPA, dumped by SRI, shunned by XeroxPARC, and spent his last thirty years wandering in exile. And here we are, grasping at shreds of his robe, to say 'we're carrying on his vision'."
I first met Doug in 1966, when a young product marketing kid, Paul Schmidt, at HP took me (at a ripe old age of 25) over to meet Doug at SRI (then still on campus in a smallish lab). Doug had me operate the chordic keyboard, the foot treadle and the knee lever. It was like you could be an impresario if you were truly multidextrous.
Doug bought an HP 1300A from me, as did Alan Kay up at University of Utah and a few others ahead of their time. As the first commercially available computer graphics display, it was a pretty strange box to behold, and at $2,000, hardly an insignificant purchase. This was the box that later earned me Dave Packard's gratuitous "Medal of Defiance" since he had ordered it to be cancelled.
We crossed paths again circa 1982 when I organized HP's first Coporate Engineering function, and we were trying to figure out how to get disparate parts of HP to talk together. Through my wife at the time, I met Patty Burbank, a first cousin of Doug's wife -- yes, in a hot tub, as befits the Silicon Valley aura of the day-- and she said she'd help reconnect us.
A couple of years later, Bert Raphael and his team (notably Walt Underwood and Mark Laubach with Dave Farber as advisor) bought the first commercially sold router from a fledgling company named cisco systems (small letters, no caps). A.nd built virtually the first multi-mediated communications rail for any company on the globe, 2nd largest email network of the day acc. to one pundit. And HP was like the 60th largest Fortune 500 company, so this wasn't exactly "standard procedure' yet
Bert and I hired Doug then to try to implement his Augmented Knowledge ideas, which we did via a group of HP Productivity Engineers (longish story here, to be told later).... That encounter started a deeper association for me with Doug that lasted the rest of his life. Consequently, I co-hosted the 40th anniversary of "the Mother of all Demos" at Stanford with Media X in 2008, meeting many of the giants in this sub-culture.
Thinking about all of this on Monday night, I just had to marvel at the folk who turned out--and reflect on how all of these ideas, the contention, the arguments, the insane competitive wars, and the camaraderie all combined to change the world--maybe even for the better?
I was proud to know him, and thrilled to have had the privilege. May he rest in peace.
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