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> • Knowledge dominates IQ. Henry Ford accomplished more than Leonardo da Vinci not because he was smarter, but because humanity's cumulative knowledge had give

by skore 13y ago

> • Knowledge dominates IQ. Henry Ford accomplished more than Leonardo da Vinci not because he was smarter, but because humanity's cumulative knowledge had given him tools and inventions Leonardo could only dream of. This really struck a chord for me. What I got from it was that many people try to build some form of success on pure IQ and get frustrated when they are outmuscled by knowledge in the market. I think that cuts back to Xerox PARC as well - by focussing everything on IQ, they created the knowledge that allowed Apple to be so dominant. Where the talk falls a little bit on the obnoxious side is when Mr. Kay makes dismissive statements on how they created what others sold, just 10 or 20 years earlier. I think that ignores the enormous amount of work you have to put into connecting this knowledge that they worked out to the current state of mind that people are in. Xerox PARC may have invented the future, but the failure of their parent company to bring that future to market shows that even with that knowledge at hand, you have quite a bit of way ahead of you.

pjmlp 13y ago
> Xerox PARC may have invented the future, but the failure of their parent company to bring that future to market shows that even with that knowledge at hand, you have quite a bit of way ahead of you. There are quite a few talks scattered around the web from former employees about how everything went downhill due to mismanagement. Back in the late 90's, when I started using Oberon and digging into what was Wirth's inspiration at Xerox PARC, I discovered a new world much more interesting that what Bell Labs could offer. However they had better luck bringing their research into the market at large, given how it all played with the universities.
trhway 13y ago
>Xerox PARC may have invented the future, but the failure of their parent company to bring that future to market shows that even with that knowledge at hand, you have quite a bit of way ahead of you. does it really matter that Xerox PARC "invented the future"? If not they, then somebody else couple years later. 10-20 years down the road it just wouldn't change a bit.
- garysweaver 13y ago
  I know that it is helpful at times to realize that invention and innovation could happen in a myriad of ways, but I don't think that is a fair way of looking at things in this case, or in many cases. Without the invention of the mouse, we might all still be using trackballs. A mouse to me is not an "A ha!" invention. I remember when I first used one that it seemed silly to move a trackball around upside-down like that. And without laser printing, we might all still be using ribbon cartridges at work, because of time/cost concerns with inkjet. Everything that happens can have profound effects on the future. Think of the Challenger and Columbia disasters. While it's true that the American public had somewhat lost interest in the shuttle program prior to the Challenger disaster, they didn't think of it as risky or dangerous. Think of the lives that would have been saved and how much farther along we might be in space exploration had greater precaution been taken.
  - trhway 13y ago
    >Without the invention of the mouse, we might all still be using trackballs. A mouse to me is not an "A ha!" invention. A ha! was to me when i first time used trackball instead of mouse. It was so great, such fast and precise movements (don't remember the game though :) And if i remember correctly people with carpal tunnel get trackball instead of mouse. >Everything that happens can have profound effects on the future. Think of the Challenger and Columbia disasters. While it's true that the American public had somewhat lost interest in the shuttle program prior to the Challenger disaster, they didn't think of it as risky or dangerous. Think of the lives that would have been saved and how much farther along we might be in space exploration had greater precaution been taken. i come from different school of thought. Whatever number of butterflies somebody squash today, it may (and will) affect only small details of the future while the whole system's trajectory will still be in the same volume of phase space as it determined by the macro conditions (like energy constraints, etc...). >farther along we might be in space exploration had greater precaution been taken the technological civilizations follow typical path. A bit faster, a bit slower doesn't matter. What matters is whether given technological civilization hits a bifurcation point like all-out nuclear war or uncontrollable climate change or uncontrollable run-away genetic development or implosion into ant-colony state as result of members being "always connected" ...
thisrod 13y ago
Right at the start, Kay pointed out that the innovation to get from Alto to Macintosh took more work than inventing the Alto. I don't think he was ignoring that. His point might be that someone was bound to do the innovation, but it took very deliberate choices for PARC to situate themselves where the invention was possible.
- skore 13y ago
  Good point. I would still say that the route "from Alto to Macintosh" is thinking more in IQ terms and that the full path, Alto to Macintosh to market, is frequently underestimated. I had a feeling that while Kay may have appreciated the first half, the second half was rather absent in his talk and he kept presenting it as though the software they built was sold ten years later by somebody else. For example saying that Microsoft took Bravo and sold Word.
  - irishjohnnie 13y ago
    What Microsoft did was hire Charles Simonyi in order to productize the research into Word

by skore 13y ago

pjmlp 13y ago

> Xerox PARC may have invented the future, but the failure of their parent company to bring that future to market shows that even with that knowledge at hand, you have quite a bit of way ahead of you. There are quite a few talks scattered around the web from former employees about how everything went downhill due to mismanagement. Back in the late 90's, when I started using Oberon and digging into what was Wirth's inspiration at Xerox PARC, I discovered a new world much more interesting that what Bell Labs could offer. However they had better luck bringing their research into the market at large, given how it all played with the universities.

trhway 13y ago

>Xerox PARC may have invented the future, but the failure of their parent company to bring that future to market shows that even with that knowledge at hand, you have quite a bit of way ahead of you. does it really matter that Xerox PARC "invented the future"? If not they, then somebody else couple years later. 10-20 years down the road it just wouldn't change a bit.

garysweaver 13y ago
I know that it is helpful at times to realize that invention and innovation could happen in a myriad of ways, but I don't think that is a fair way of looking at things in this case, or in many cases. Without the invention of the mouse, we might all still be using trackballs. A mouse to me is not an "A ha!" invention. I remember when I first used one that it seemed silly to move a trackball around upside-down like that. And without laser printing, we might all still be using ribbon cartridges at work, because of time/cost concerns with inkjet. Everything that happens can have profound effects on the future. Think of the Challenger and Columbia disasters. While it's true that the American public had somewhat lost interest in the shuttle program prior to the Challenger disaster, they didn't think of it as risky or dangerous. Think of the lives that would have been saved and how much farther along we might be in space exploration had greater precaution been taken.
- trhway 13y ago
  >Without the invention of the mouse, we might all still be using trackballs. A mouse to me is not an "A ha!" invention. A ha! was to me when i first time used trackball instead of mouse. It was so great, such fast and precise movements (don't remember the game though :) And if i remember correctly people with carpal tunnel get trackball instead of mouse. >Everything that happens can have profound effects on the future. Think of the Challenger and Columbia disasters. While it's true that the American public had somewhat lost interest in the shuttle program prior to the Challenger disaster, they didn't think of it as risky or dangerous. Think of the lives that would have been saved and how much farther along we might be in space exploration had greater precaution been taken. i come from different school of thought. Whatever number of butterflies somebody squash today, it may (and will) affect only small details of the future while the whole system's trajectory will still be in the same volume of phase space as it determined by the macro conditions (like energy constraints, etc...). >farther along we might be in space exploration had greater precaution been taken the technological civilizations follow typical path. A bit faster, a bit slower doesn't matter. What matters is whether given technological civilization hits a bifurcation point like all-out nuclear war or uncontrollable climate change or uncontrollable run-away genetic development or implosion into ant-colony state as result of members being "always connected" ...

thisrod 13y ago

Right at the start, Kay pointed out that the innovation to get from Alto to Macintosh took more work than inventing the Alto. I don't think he was ignoring that. His point might be that someone was bound to do the innovation, but it took very deliberate choices for PARC to situate themselves where the invention was possible.

skore 13y ago
Good point. I would still say that the route "from Alto to Macintosh" is thinking more in IQ terms and that the full path, Alto to Macintosh to market, is frequently underestimated. I had a feeling that while Kay may have appreciated the first half, the second half was rather absent in his talk and he kept presenting it as though the software they built was sold ten years later by somebody else. For example saying that Microsoft took Bravo and sold Word.
- irishjohnnie 13y ago
  What Microsoft did was hire Charles Simonyi in order to productize the research into Word