4 ms·

General Magic also had some really dud ideas. They went to great lengths to spec out software "agents" that would actually travel to some other location and the

General Magic also had some really dud ideas. They went to great lengths to spec out software "agents" that would actually travel to some other location and then execute there. Just imagine the security implications of that. It's not hyperbole to say that they missed the Internet, and this was at a period when the Internet was beginning to catch on. This is the real reason you may not have heard of them.

wmf 5y ago
Telescript was definitely a bet against the Internet, although I don't know if Magic Cap even included Telescript. Palm and Newton didn't bet on the Internet either because mobile Internet may not have even existed at the time, but they didn't explicitly bet against it.
- AlbertCory 5y ago
  Palm did quite well for a while with no wireless connectivity to speak of, other than sync'ing with your PC.
  - wmf 5y ago
    Yeah, Palm didn't force people to pay for ridiculously expensive wireless hardware/service and they didn't try to invent their own alternative to the Internet.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  Palm had mobile data on the Palm VII in 99.
- __d 5y ago
  Apple and NewtonOS supported a variety of different mobile networks (eg. ARDIS/DataTAC and CDPD) in the time before the Internet and TCP/IP became dominant. But it's fair to say that the OS was not built with networking in mind. Later releases of NewtonOS included a TCP/IP stack that worked with dialup PPP (over PSTN modems), wired Ethernet, and early releases of what became WiFi (at that time, WaveLAN). The devices' IR "beaming" hardware meant that NewtonOS had an inbox/outbox concept that allowed users to exchange email, documents, software, etc. This was adapted to work with always-on Internet connectivity, but it was clearly a retrofit (much like MacOS and Windows at the same time).
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
"Agents" where the new hotness when General Magic was doing it's thing. CS depts everywhere were writing about agents, "everybody" imagined them as the future. It wasn't just GM that got this, uh, wrong.
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  Did they get it wrong? I've always viewed IFTTT, "function as a service" offerings, many of the automation systems we use for building and testing and deploying software, and others as applications of those ideas. Maybe not as full-featured or ubiquitous as we imagined at the turn of the century, but certainly still in the vein of software agents.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    I think they did get it wrong. The current role of what we might (Just about) call "agents" could have been described without the 90s terminologies and conceptions. But that period's agents were supposed to be something quite different from RPC (and really, even from AJAX when it eventually arrived). It turns out that we mostly just got a slightly fancier version of RPC that has allowed us to build some cool services, but the 90s part of it has mostly dropped away. I was working at UWashington CS&E during that period, and the air was buzzing with the idea of "code objects" that would actually "go out on the internet and book your next trip for you". Sure, we ended up with Expedia which is pretty great, but it's not at all what was being imagined back then.
    - cgio 5y ago
      We have quite prevalent “code objects” too, tweets etc. we sent out on the internet to solve our problems. They do act as agents though, and are sometimes not successful. And you do not code for operations but for virality in an execution machine that is being optimised for this operation via specialisation of its components to be collaterally, obsessively specifically extremist.
      - 5y ago

wmf 5y ago

Telescript was definitely a bet against the Internet, although I don't know if Magic Cap even included Telescript. Palm and Newton didn't bet on the Internet either because mobile Internet may not have even existed at the time, but they didn't explicitly bet against it.

AlbertCory 5y ago
Palm did quite well for a while with no wireless connectivity to speak of, other than sync'ing with your PC.
- wmf 5y ago
  Yeah, Palm didn't force people to pay for ridiculously expensive wireless hardware/service and they didn't try to invent their own alternative to the Internet.
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
Palm had mobile data on the Palm VII in 99.
__d 5y ago
Apple and NewtonOS supported a variety of different mobile networks (eg. ARDIS/DataTAC and CDPD) in the time before the Internet and TCP/IP became dominant. But it's fair to say that the OS was not built with networking in mind. Later releases of NewtonOS included a TCP/IP stack that worked with dialup PPP (over PSTN modems), wired Ethernet, and early releases of what became WiFi (at that time, WaveLAN). The devices' IR "beaming" hardware meant that NewtonOS had an inbox/outbox concept that allowed users to exchange email, documents, software, etc. This was adapted to work with always-on Internet connectivity, but it was clearly a retrofit (much like MacOS and Windows at the same time).

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

"Agents" where the new hotness when General Magic was doing it's thing. CS depts everywhere were writing about agents, "everybody" imagined them as the future. It wasn't just GM that got this, uh, wrong.

Jtsummers 5y ago
Did they get it wrong? I've always viewed IFTTT, "function as a service" offerings, many of the automation systems we use for building and testing and deploying software, and others as applications of those ideas. Maybe not as full-featured or ubiquitous as we imagined at the turn of the century, but certainly still in the vein of software agents.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  I think they did get it wrong. The current role of what we might (Just about) call "agents" could have been described without the 90s terminologies and conceptions. But that period's agents were supposed to be something quite different from RPC (and really, even from AJAX when it eventually arrived). It turns out that we mostly just got a slightly fancier version of RPC that has allowed us to build some cool services, but the 90s part of it has mostly dropped away. I was working at UWashington CS&E during that period, and the air was buzzing with the idea of "code objects" that would actually "go out on the internet and book your next trip for you". Sure, we ended up with Expedia which is pretty great, but it's not at all what was being imagined back then.
  - cgio 5y ago
    We have quite prevalent “code objects” too, tweets etc. we sent out on the internet to solve our problems. They do act as agents though, and are sometimes not successful. And you do not code for operations but for virality in an execution machine that is being optimised for this operation via specialisation of its components to be collaterally, obsessively specifically extremist.
    - 5y ago