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It also helps if you are Alan Kay or the other talents that were at PARC back then. What future would you create if you had a custom $100K (2022 dollars) works

It also helps if you are Alan Kay or the other talents that were at PARC back then. What future would you create if you had a custom $100K (2022 dollars) workstation?

pavlov 5y ago
The NVIDIA DGX Station A100 has a list price of $149k, I believe. It's a workstation that's advertised as an "AI data center in a box": https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/dgx-station-a100/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/dgx-station-a100/
- buescher 5y ago
  That looks like it would be an absolute hoot to experiment with, but I don't know what I could possibly do with one that would generate a return on $150K. What would you do?
  - sbierwagen 5y ago
    In some circumstances making a hedge fund model 0.001% better would return 10x that. John Carmack tweeted about buying one a while back. I'm not sure if a DGX on your desk does anything for working with ML at the bleeding edge, though, since those all run on megaclusters of A100s or TPUs.
    - buescher 5y ago
      What's he doing with it?
      - sbierwagen 5y ago
        AI stuff: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2547632585471243&id=100006735798590 https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2547632585...
luckydata 5y ago
I think we tend to overestimate how "good" those people were. Yes they were definitely good professionals, but they happened to be in a very special place at a special time with very few constraints compared to how we work now. It was a lot easier for them to innovate than for any of us now.
- buescher 5y ago
  Folks at PARC designed and built their own PDP-10 clone to get around internal politics. It's hard to overestimate the amount of talent concentrated there at the time. It always looks like all the low-hanging fruit has already been plucked. So, stop looking for low-hanging fruit.
  - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    And they did it as a warm-up before tackling something difficult.
- azinman2 5y ago
  They were working in a total vacuum. Computers were classically giant things that simply tabulated or ran physics simulations. To create an entire well articulated vision of HCI is extremely difficult and requires both creativity and technical competence. I would not make such statements that it was easier to innovate then. In fact, I’d say it’s way easier to innovate now that so much exists to play with and mix and match, not to mention the ability to have perspective on negatives of assumptions previously made that can be corrected.
  - retrocryptid 5y ago
    well... not a TOTAL vacuum. a number of the PARC people (thinking of Tesler & Kay) were intimately familiar with Englebart's work at SRI. When the ARC (Engelbart's Augmentation Research Center at SRI) was winding down and PARC was staffing up, the people who left first were supposedly those who rejected the "brittleness" of the expert-focused software ARC developed. It's definitely true that the cost of implementing a frame buffer fell well into the affordable range as they were moving to PARC. And politics at PARC made it easy to say you were developing a system for "inexpert document managers." They were definitely exploring new ideas about HCI as PC hardware was emerging. But Larry Tessler was pretty clear that Lisa learned what not to do from looking at the Alto & Star. And the Alto & Star learned what not to do by looking at various bits of ARC software. And Engelbart was adamant his team not repeat the UI/UX mistakes of ITS. So sure... they were trailblazers, but they had a good idea of where they wanted to go.

It also helps if you are Alan Kay or the other talents that were at PARC back then. What future would you create if you had a custom $100K (2022 dollars) workstation?

pavlov 5y ago

The NVIDIA DGX Station A100 has a list price of $149k, I believe. It's a workstation that's advertised as an "AI data center in a box": https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/dgx-station-a100/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/dgx-station-a100/

buescher 5y ago
That looks like it would be an absolute hoot to experiment with, but I don't know what I could possibly do with one that would generate a return on $150K. What would you do?
- sbierwagen 5y ago
  In some circumstances making a hedge fund model 0.001% better would return 10x that. John Carmack tweeted about buying one a while back. I'm not sure if a DGX on your desk does anything for working with ML at the bleeding edge, though, since those all run on megaclusters of A100s or TPUs.
  - buescher 5y ago
    What's he doing with it?
    - sbierwagen 5y ago
      AI stuff: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2547632585471243&id=100006735798590 https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2547632585...

luckydata 5y ago

I think we tend to overestimate how "good" those people were. Yes they were definitely good professionals, but they happened to be in a very special place at a special time with very few constraints compared to how we work now. It was a lot easier for them to innovate than for any of us now.

buescher 5y ago
Folks at PARC designed and built their own PDP-10 clone to get around internal politics. It's hard to overestimate the amount of talent concentrated there at the time. It always looks like all the low-hanging fruit has already been plucked. So, stop looking for low-hanging fruit.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  And they did it as a warm-up before tackling something difficult.
azinman2 5y ago
They were working in a total vacuum. Computers were classically giant things that simply tabulated or ran physics simulations. To create an entire well articulated vision of HCI is extremely difficult and requires both creativity and technical competence. I would not make such statements that it was easier to innovate then. In fact, I’d say it’s way easier to innovate now that so much exists to play with and mix and match, not to mention the ability to have perspective on negatives of assumptions previously made that can be corrected.
- retrocryptid 5y ago
  well... not a TOTAL vacuum. a number of the PARC people (thinking of Tesler & Kay) were intimately familiar with Englebart's work at SRI. When the ARC (Engelbart's Augmentation Research Center at SRI) was winding down and PARC was staffing up, the people who left first were supposedly those who rejected the "brittleness" of the expert-focused software ARC developed. It's definitely true that the cost of implementing a frame buffer fell well into the affordable range as they were moving to PARC. And politics at PARC made it easy to say you were developing a system for "inexpert document managers." They were definitely exploring new ideas about HCI as PC hardware was emerging. But Larry Tessler was pretty clear that Lisa learned what not to do from looking at the Alto & Star. And the Alto & Star learned what not to do by looking at various bits of ARC software. And Engelbart was adamant his team not repeat the UI/UX mistakes of ITS. So sure... they were trailblazers, but they had a good idea of where they wanted to go.