5 ms·

I think people forget that it takes 2 types of people to move tech or for that matter a company to greatness. The product is not the star. There's the dreamer t

I think people forget that it takes 2 types of people to move tech or for that matter a company to greatness. The product is not the star. There's the dreamer that comes up with a product and then there's the one that sells the dream to the rest of us. They are usually BSer's to the nth degree. They will lie to your face and you will love them for that. They are soooooo loved by some that some men and women dream of having their baby. Think IBM,Apple,Ford,TESLA and many more. Xerox PARC, just didn't have a great BSer in-house.

chaosbutters 4y ago
I work at PARC, and I hard disagree. My "CEO" of our division is an impressive salesman that just had everyone at our conference coming to our booth.
- contingencies 4y ago
  Which field do you work in? Is there an overview of the fields of research currently being pursued?
kkfx 4y ago
You forget a more broad stanza: false revolutions happen, like you say, real ones are feared and avoided by most. On one side actual élite (in business, politics etc, a generic tag to say "most well position somewhere in something") fear the substantial change because it might both succeed pushing them aside since they became useless or fail crushing the along if they have tried it; on the other side most people adverse changes. Anyone might be pushed to buy a phone/something alike, considering it just a small addition to their daily routine, anyone might be pushed to buy a desktop/something else in general like the classic joke from the early web "hi! I want to buy a website" "hum, ok... To do what?" "Oh, I do not want to use it, all start buying one so I need one to remain in the market, is for customers not for me". But a substantial revolution is another story. Just see in daily life how many time you hear people say "I've always do this like that" and so on even if it's clearly an absurd thing or something that can&should be done but in a very different manner. Even small things. At PARC time was the filing cabinet/suspended folder era, where people deeply think in paper+mechanic terms, the idea of files and folders (mimicking aforementioned filing cabinet and suspended folders) might pass easily, the idea of dynamic documents is simply unthinkable and fearful "I might loose something", "people might cheat", ... similarly the idea to send emails might pass easily, a better fax system, but the idea of computing inside again can't pass. For most a GUI can only pass, even today, as a single sheet of paper, something we can draw, compose, but not something else. Spreadsheets succeed even if they are absurd in IT terms for countless reasons while DB+simple languages for equivalent needs does not for the very same reason. PARC vision, for the little I know propose a substantial revolution, not an evolution of its present state of thing. That's their real "fail"... To succeed they need to find a way to demonstrate and spread their tech until it became well known enough. Like in the past in France where no peasant have accepted the new vegetable imported from America: potatoes. Rumors spread it's dangerous etc. Things change only when the army drop them around the country in manure piles and soldiers came back after enough time to collect and eat potatoes. Sunflowers in Russia have experienced a similar fate.
- WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
  True, sometimes the constraints are so big that no matter what's done it's impossible to succeed.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
KerrAvon 4y ago
I disagree with the lie-to-your-face characterization. Steve Jobs was always telling the truth as he saw it at the time. He was just uncommonly good at making you believe it. Henry Ford also wasn’t lying at any point, and was not a Steve Jobs figure either. He was widely loved (prior to his anti-semitic statements, to be fair) by the common folk for telling it like he saw it. IBM, I’m not sure what this refers to. The Watsons were salesmen, but were not widely considered dishonest, certainly not Jr. Tesla, yes, Musk is full of shit at all points. People don’t seem to love him for it.
- mikelevins 4y ago
  "Steve Jobs was always telling the truth as he saw it at the time." I doubt it. I'll offer two stories about it. When Steve recruited me to work for NeXT, he spent an hour or two with me in a conference room, working on persuading me. The experience was fascinating. One thing Michael Fassbender's portrayal in the film "Steve Jobs" missed was the hard, piercing quality of his gaze when he was pitching. People like to talk about "laser focus"; Steve's gaze is the best example of that I've ever seen in a real, person-to-person encounter. His eyes were hard, vigilant, analytical. He noticed everything. He tried a series of pitches to get me on board. Now, I did end up going to work for NeXT for a while, but I wasn't buying any of Steve's pitches that day. He detected my skepticism really quickly each time. He would start a pitch with all the passion and conviction you would expect if you've ever seen one of his keynote speeches or interviews, like his whole being was invested in the pitch. He would immediately detect that it wasn't working, and he'd just drop it, like it had never mattered. He'd move on to another pitch, something totally different, and he'd be just as committed and passionate as in the previous one--until he detected that it wasn't selling me. It was like he was flipping channels, looking for anything that would work. The second story is from a couple years later, after Steve returned to Apple and took over again. I was back at Apple, too. Steve held a town hall meeting for the whole company to introduce the new candy-colored iMac (which was basically just the old iMac in new candy-colored clothing). I attended with a good friend who was working on the system software. Steve came out in full pitch mode, selling Apple's new product to its employees. My impression of his pitch was that it sure was a good thing that he went into selling products and not into politics. Before that, I had always been sort of baffled by the ability of history's great demogogues to move huge crowds to behavior that in retrospect was clearly ill-advised. Steve's internal pitch for the iMac was a sort of "Oooohhhhhh...now I get it" moment for me. He was just extremely good at reading a crowd's reactions, saying what it wanted to hear, moving it to the reactions he wanted it to have. Walking out after the pitch, my friend was shaking his head, saying, "I believed him. I knew it was all lies. I mean, some of that stuff is my work, and yet I believed him." My sense is that Steve's objective was always selling his vision. He preferred to tell the truth to accomplish it, but if the truth wasn't working, he was perfectly happy to change channels to anything else that would do the job.
phendrenad2 4y ago
Microsoft's entire existence has been "see what some dreamer has dreamt, and mass-produce it for the average homo sapiens"
- TheRealNGenius 4y ago
  But without the original vision or taste

chaosbutters 4y ago

I work at PARC, and I hard disagree. My "CEO" of our division is an impressive salesman that just had everyone at our conference coming to our booth.

contingencies 4y ago
Which field do you work in? Is there an overview of the fields of research currently being pursued?

kkfx 4y ago

You forget a more broad stanza: false revolutions happen, like you say, real ones are feared and avoided by most. On one side actual élite (in business, politics etc, a generic tag to say "most well position somewhere in something") fear the substantial change because it might both succeed pushing them aside since they became useless or fail crushing the along if they have tried it; on the other side most people adverse changes. Anyone might be pushed to buy a phone/something alike, considering it just a small addition to their daily routine, anyone might be pushed to buy a desktop/something else in general like the classic joke from the early web "hi! I want to buy a website" "hum, ok... To do what?" "Oh, I do not want to use it, all start buying one so I need one to remain in the market, is for customers not for me". But a substantial revolution is another story. Just see in daily life how many time you hear people say "I've always do this like that" and so on even if it's clearly an absurd thing or something that can&should be done but in a very different manner. Even small things. At PARC time was the filing cabinet/suspended folder era, where people deeply think in paper+mechanic terms, the idea of files and folders (mimicking aforementioned filing cabinet and suspended folders) might pass easily, the idea of dynamic documents is simply unthinkable and fearful "I might loose something", "people might cheat", ... similarly the idea to send emails might pass easily, a better fax system, but the idea of computing inside again can't pass. For most a GUI can only pass, even today, as a single sheet of paper, something we can draw, compose, but not something else. Spreadsheets succeed even if they are absurd in IT terms for countless reasons while DB+simple languages for equivalent needs does not for the very same reason. PARC vision, for the little I know propose a substantial revolution, not an evolution of its present state of thing. That's their real "fail"... To succeed they need to find a way to demonstrate and spread their tech until it became well known enough. Like in the past in France where no peasant have accepted the new vegetable imported from America: potatoes. Rumors spread it's dangerous etc. Things change only when the army drop them around the country in manure piles and soldiers came back after enough time to collect and eat potatoes. Sunflowers in Russia have experienced a similar fate.

WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
True, sometimes the constraints are so big that no matter what's done it's impossible to succeed.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

KerrAvon 4y ago

I disagree with the lie-to-your-face characterization. Steve Jobs was always telling the truth as he saw it at the time. He was just uncommonly good at making you believe it. Henry Ford also wasn’t lying at any point, and was not a Steve Jobs figure either. He was widely loved (prior to his anti-semitic statements, to be fair) by the common folk for telling it like he saw it. IBM, I’m not sure what this refers to. The Watsons were salesmen, but were not widely considered dishonest, certainly not Jr. Tesla, yes, Musk is full of shit at all points. People don’t seem to love him for it.

mikelevins 4y ago
"Steve Jobs was always telling the truth as he saw it at the time." I doubt it. I'll offer two stories about it. When Steve recruited me to work for NeXT, he spent an hour or two with me in a conference room, working on persuading me. The experience was fascinating. One thing Michael Fassbender's portrayal in the film "Steve Jobs" missed was the hard, piercing quality of his gaze when he was pitching. People like to talk about "laser focus"; Steve's gaze is the best example of that I've ever seen in a real, person-to-person encounter. His eyes were hard, vigilant, analytical. He noticed everything. He tried a series of pitches to get me on board. Now, I did end up going to work for NeXT for a while, but I wasn't buying any of Steve's pitches that day. He detected my skepticism really quickly each time. He would start a pitch with all the passion and conviction you would expect if you've ever seen one of his keynote speeches or interviews, like his whole being was invested in the pitch. He would immediately detect that it wasn't working, and he'd just drop it, like it had never mattered. He'd move on to another pitch, something totally different, and he'd be just as committed and passionate as in the previous one--until he detected that it wasn't selling me. It was like he was flipping channels, looking for anything that would work. The second story is from a couple years later, after Steve returned to Apple and took over again. I was back at Apple, too. Steve held a town hall meeting for the whole company to introduce the new candy-colored iMac (which was basically just the old iMac in new candy-colored clothing). I attended with a good friend who was working on the system software. Steve came out in full pitch mode, selling Apple's new product to its employees. My impression of his pitch was that it sure was a good thing that he went into selling products and not into politics. Before that, I had always been sort of baffled by the ability of history's great demogogues to move huge crowds to behavior that in retrospect was clearly ill-advised. Steve's internal pitch for the iMac was a sort of "Oooohhhhhh...now I get it" moment for me. He was just extremely good at reading a crowd's reactions, saying what it wanted to hear, moving it to the reactions he wanted it to have. Walking out after the pitch, my friend was shaking his head, saying, "I believed him. I knew it was all lies. I mean, some of that stuff is my work, and yet I believed him." My sense is that Steve's objective was always selling his vision. He preferred to tell the truth to accomplish it, but if the truth wasn't working, he was perfectly happy to change channels to anything else that would do the job.

phendrenad2 4y ago

Microsoft's entire existence has been "see what some dreamer has dreamt, and mass-produce it for the average homo sapiens"

TheRealNGenius 4y ago
But without the original vision or taste