2 ms·

"I told them Xerox has got to get itself together, because there's no way a big company can take advantage of things moving this fast. People will get frustrate

"I told them Xerox has got to get itself together, because there's no way a big company can take advantage of things moving this fast. People will get frustrated and start their own companies." —Carver Mead, 1979 (employee at Xerox PARC), discussing why Xerox needed to focus more on adopting integrated circuits into the computers they had already developed, instead of continuing to just make increasingly-obsolete copiers.

zindlerb 3y ago
I don't think that is an apt metaphor. Imo Openai is Apple and Google is Parc. Google experiencing a similar issue to parc where they invented transformers but have been unable to capture the value so far due to being focused on ads revenue.
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago
  Great nuanced distinction. ---- "Xerox's top executives were for the most part salesmen of copy machines. From these leased behemoths the revenue stream was as tangible as the `click` of the meters counting off copies, for which the customer paid Xerox so many cents per page (and from which Xerox paid its salespersons their commissions). Noticing their eyes narrow [at R&D's attempts at asking to market their computer, one] could almost hear them thinking: 'If there is no paper to be copied, where's the `click`?' In other words: 'How will I get paid?' " —Michael Hiltzik's "Dealers of Lightning" (p272)
  - osigurdson 3y ago
    It seems odd that Xerox bothered with the research lab at all then. Why not only research how to make copier's cheaper and more compelling if company culture is Mad Men, copier edition?
    - danielscrubs 3y ago
      Always the same story, some boss wants to get noticed ask underlings to make something cool. Underlings make something cool, bosses boss get scared his position will be taken, orders a shutdown of it and to focus on what matters.
- sanxiyn 3y ago
  What value? I doubt any LLM player is making any profit. Sure, NVIDIA is, but that's because "in a gold rush, sell shovels" is an eternal advice.
wolverine876 3y ago
> 1979 ... increasingly-obsolete copiers. In 1979, I doubt copiers were 'increasingly obsolete'; I'd expect the market was growing rapidly. Laser printers, email, the Internet, didn't yet exist; PCs barely existed, and not in offices. Almost everywhere would have used typewriters, I suppose.
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago
  Xerox's copier sales peak was in the early 70's, and then multiple international companies [primarily in Japan] began creating better, less expensive copiers. By the late 70's, Xerox was massively losing marketshare [to both competitors, and to blossoming word processing technologies]. >Laser printers, email, the Internet, didn't yet exist Actually, all three did; the latter was in the form of ARPANET [to be technical, not "The Internet"].
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    One of us needs sources, and I think it's you :) > Actually, all three did; the latter was in the form of ARPANET [to be technical, not "The Internet"]. True, but a technicality. Very few people knew they even existed, and they had zero impact on Xerox copier sales.
    - ProllyInfamous 3y ago
      >Very few people knew they even existed Does not mean they did not exist. See citations, below: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_printing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_printing (see 2nd intro paragraph) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_email https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_email (see 3rd intro paragraph)
      - wolverine876 3y ago
        ? Note the sentence immediately before the one you quoted.
alexey-salmin 3y ago
Where is this quote from? Can't easily Google it
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago
  Dealers of Lightning; the best "tech sociology" book I've read, yet; was recommended here on HN as "must read" and it is absolutely a MUST READ.
0xcde4c3db 3y ago
I don't mean to detract from your point (if anything, I suppose I'm obliquely supporting it), but I feel compelled to say that it's really weird to see Carver Mead cited in the context of "employee at Xerox PARC", because I mostly know him as one half of "Mead/Conway", i.e. the duo who arguably supplied the computational (dare I say "algorithmic"?) rocket fuel for the unbelievably wild progress of chips in the 1990s [1] [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead%E2%80%93Conway_VLSI_chip_design_revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead%E2%80%93Conway_VLSI_chip_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Conway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Conway
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago
  The textbook they wrote together was while both were collaborating at PARC (Mead was at CalTech, then, too); they wrote it to add credibility to their VLSI theories, which at the time most experts believed would lead to thermal runaway (i.e. not stable, long-term, to pack transistors densely). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carver_Mead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carver_Mead Learning about the interconnectedness of all this historic intellectual "brain theft," keeps me excited for an AGI-future, post-copyright/IP. What are we going to accomplish [globally] when you can't just own brilliant ideas?!

zindlerb 3y ago

I don't think that is an apt metaphor. Imo Openai is Apple and Google is Parc. Google experiencing a similar issue to parc where they invented transformers but have been unable to capture the value so far due to being focused on ads revenue.

ProllyInfamous 3y ago
Great nuanced distinction. ---- "Xerox's top executives were for the most part salesmen of copy machines. From these leased behemoths the revenue stream was as tangible as the `click` of the meters counting off copies, for which the customer paid Xerox so many cents per page (and from which Xerox paid its salespersons their commissions). Noticing their eyes narrow [at R&D's attempts at asking to market their computer, one] could almost hear them thinking: 'If there is no paper to be copied, where's the `click`?' In other words: 'How will I get paid?' " —Michael Hiltzik's "Dealers of Lightning" (p272)
- osigurdson 3y ago
  It seems odd that Xerox bothered with the research lab at all then. Why not only research how to make copier's cheaper and more compelling if company culture is Mad Men, copier edition?
  - danielscrubs 3y ago
    Always the same story, some boss wants to get noticed ask underlings to make something cool. Underlings make something cool, bosses boss get scared his position will be taken, orders a shutdown of it and to focus on what matters.
sanxiyn 3y ago
What value? I doubt any LLM player is making any profit. Sure, NVIDIA is, but that's because "in a gold rush, sell shovels" is an eternal advice.

wolverine876 3y ago

> 1979 ... increasingly-obsolete copiers. In 1979, I doubt copiers were 'increasingly obsolete'; I'd expect the market was growing rapidly. Laser printers, email, the Internet, didn't yet exist; PCs barely existed, and not in offices. Almost everywhere would have used typewriters, I suppose.

ProllyInfamous 3y ago
Xerox's copier sales peak was in the early 70's, and then multiple international companies [primarily in Japan] began creating better, less expensive copiers. By the late 70's, Xerox was massively losing marketshare [to both competitors, and to blossoming word processing technologies]. >Laser printers, email, the Internet, didn't yet exist Actually, all three did; the latter was in the form of ARPANET [to be technical, not "The Internet"].
- wolverine876 3y ago
  One of us needs sources, and I think it's you :) > Actually, all three did; the latter was in the form of ARPANET [to be technical, not "The Internet"]. True, but a technicality. Very few people knew they even existed, and they had zero impact on Xerox copier sales.
  - ProllyInfamous 3y ago
    >Very few people knew they even existed Does not mean they did not exist. See citations, below: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_printing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_printing (see 2nd intro paragraph) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_email https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_email (see 3rd intro paragraph)
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      ? Note the sentence immediately before the one you quoted.

alexey-salmin 3y ago

Where is this quote from? Can't easily Google it

ProllyInfamous 3y ago
Dealers of Lightning; the best "tech sociology" book I've read, yet; was recommended here on HN as "must read" and it is absolutely a MUST READ.

0xcde4c3db 3y ago

I don't mean to detract from your point (if anything, I suppose I'm obliquely supporting it), but I feel compelled to say that it's really weird to see Carver Mead cited in the context of "employee at Xerox PARC", because I mostly know him as one half of "Mead/Conway", i.e. the duo who arguably supplied the computational (dare I say "algorithmic"?) rocket fuel for the unbelievably wild progress of chips in the 1990s [1] [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead%E2%80%93Conway_VLSI_chip_design_revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead%E2%80%93Conway_VLSI_chip_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Conway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Conway

ProllyInfamous 3y ago
The textbook they wrote together was while both were collaborating at PARC (Mead was at CalTech, then, too); they wrote it to add credibility to their VLSI theories, which at the time most experts believed would lead to thermal runaway (i.e. not stable, long-term, to pack transistors densely). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carver_Mead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carver_Mead Learning about the interconnectedness of all this historic intellectual "brain theft," keeps me excited for an AGI-future, post-copyright/IP. What are we going to accomplish [globally] when you can't just own brilliant ideas?!