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
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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
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von Peter Seibel
von Steven Levy
