Dealers of Lightning
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Amazon.co.uk
One of the great legends of the computer business is how a photocopier company invented the personal computer and then didn't know what to do with it. Unlike many such legends, this one is substantially true. Most of the computing technologies we take for granted today--from the windows-based graphical user interface to Ethernet and the laser printer--were all invented in the early 1970s by researchers at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Centre. But although Xerox funded this amazing creative burst, the company proved unable to profit from it, and it was outfits like Apple, 3Com and Microsoft which brought the ideas of the PARC researchers to the market. Micheal Hiltzig's Dealers of Lightning is not the first attempt to explore the story of how a great corporation "fumbled the future", but it is the most comprehensive to date.
Although the book covers much of the corporate infighting and the interpersonal rivalries that surrounded the PARC enterprise, its main focus is on the achievements of the squad of brilliant researchers recruited by Bob Taylor, the manager of the PARC Computer Science Lab (and the man who had earlier conceived and funded the ARPANET while working for the Pentagon). It's a riveting story of remarkable intellectual triumphs, and a sobering reminder that managing people with such high IQs makes herding cats look easy. Several of the characters in the story have testified that Hiltzig's account is broadly accurate, even when his portrayal of them was not entirely complimentary--which suggests that he has got it about right. In an age when few people know how to manage creative people, Dealers of Lightning should be required reading for everyone who aspires to lead people smarter than themselves. --John Naughton -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
Amazon.com
Throughout the '70s and '80s, Xerox Corporation provided unlimited funding to a renegade think tank called the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Occupying a ramshackle building adjacent to Stanford University, PARC's occupants would prove to be the greatest gathering of computer talent ever assembled: it conceptualized the very notion of the desktop computer, long before IBM launched its PC, and it laid the foundation for Microsoft Windows with a prototype graphical user interface of icons and layered screens. Even the technology that makes it possible for these words to appear on the screen can trace its roots to Xerox's eccentric band of innovators. But despite PARC's many industry-altering breakthroughs, Xerox failed ever to grasp the financial potential of such achievements. And while Xerox's inability to capitalize upon some of the world's most important technological advancements makes for an interesting enough story, Los Angeles Times correspondent Michael Hiltzik focuses instead on the inventions and the inventors themselves. We meet fiery ringleader Bob Taylor, a preacher's son from Texas known as much for his ego as for his uncanny leadership; we trace the term "personal computer" back to Alan Kay, a visionary who dreamed of a machine small enough to tuck under the arm; and we learn how PARC's farsighted principles led to collaborative brilliance. Hiltzik's consummate account of this burgeoning era won't improve Xerox's stake in the computer industry by much, but it should at least give credit where credit is due. Recommended. --Rob McDonald
-- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
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1 von 1 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich:
4.0 von 5 Sternen
Fascinating story,
Von
Rezension bezieht sich auf: Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (Gebundene Ausgabe)
I read this book because it was mentioned in The New New Thing - a book about Jim Clark. What I found was a very well written story of PARC (Xerox's research centre in Palo Alto). The story is really set in the 1970s and 1980s when Xerox set up PARC really to support a newly acquired computer company SDS. What happened instead was that PARC itself outshone the acquired company and for a corporation that built up its name in the photocopier business, it caused many problems. Hiltzik is a master at capturing the mood and feel. He brings a multitude of characters to life in bite sized chapers. (The book has almost 450 pages but the chapters are about 8-12 pages long making it easy to pick up and immerse yourself in a piece of history.) What I found astounding was the level of technology reached in PARC. This is well documented in this book. You have Douglas Englebart who used research and ideas raised in the 1940s as a blueprint for interactive hardware and software aimed at manipulating text and video images (he was the "inventor" of the mouse). You have explanations of the floating point function (which caused Intel so many problemns with its Pentium chip). You have descriptions of culture shaping events such as Bob Taylor's "Beat the Dealer" where his people would spend an hour or so explaining their research and then were let loose to the erudite audience "like a rank steak to a pack of hungry wolves." You even have the origins of Ethernet and TCP/IP documented here. This is a very detailed book but unlike say "competing on Internet Time" it is much more like a story with real characters and real-life issues. It reads as well as a Southwick book but with much more to say. It is amazing what PARC produced using a bunch of the best people around, and it is the characterisation of these very talented people which made me enjoy the book so much. Hiltizk masterfully adds an epilogue that goes some way to trash the view that Xerox must have been just plain stupid to let all this technology go. A very thoughtful and broadminded ending to a superb book. Helfen Sie anderen Kunden bei der Suche nach den hilfreichsten Rezensionen
4.0 von 5 Sternen
Brilliant look at the center of the world,
Von
Rezension bezieht sich auf: Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (Taschenbuch)
Just about everything to do with modern computing had its origin in this little Palo Alto lab. But the real story is about the complicated and ultimately uncontrolable process of bringing innovations to market. Though Xerox had the option to take a first crack at turning these into products, a combination of forces made it such that companies like Apple, 3Com, Microsoft and others were able to truly turn these inventions into the enormous industry it is today. Very readable and very well written.
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4.0 von 5 Sternen
Good History Lesson and Case Study,
Von
Rezension bezieht sich auf: Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (Taschenbuch)
I, like another reviewer, came across this book because it was mentioned in the New New Thing. I picked up and read the book because I've long been interested in Xerox PARC, and how it came to be. I was rewarded with an interesting, and seemingly thorough story about the people, motivations, and resources that came together at PARC.I enjoyed the detail presented in the background material about the people and circumstances that came together to found PARC. There's a lot of good stuff about so many of the seminal minds and ideas that made much of the computing environment that we use today possible. I believe that most of the major breakthrough inventions that came out of PARC are written about, including the background, people, and stories surrounding them. If you are interested in the history of computing and invention, this is wonderful, fascinating stuff. I expected more material about how and why Xerox missed so many opportunities to capitalize on the inventions created in this extroadinary place. To be fair, however, the story may be as simple as presented. The author also debunks the myth that Xerox didn't reap any reward from inventions that came out of PARC. But woven throughout the text and stories in this book is a case study about innovation within large companies, and how it is actively killed. Again, I very much enjoyed this book. The stories that I knew little about before reading it are now much more clear. I found the stories fairly presented and free of jargon. Helfen Sie anderen Kunden bei der Suche nach den hilfreichsten Rezensionen
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