[HN Gopher] Before General Magic there was Paradigm (2018)
___________________________________________________________________
Before General Magic there was Paradigm (2018)
Author : tobr
Score : 30 points
Date : 2021-10-02 12:35 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (joshcarter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (joshcarter.com)
| joshu wrote:
| oh my god, side talking
| gompertz wrote:
| I watched the General Magic documentary couple years back... I'm
| sure it was just my perception, and maybe the video editing, but
| by what I recall it looked like they mostly goofed off and it was
| more a think-tank than actually building stuff. It's possible the
| video was cut this was to align with the "fun, silicon valley"
| narratives. Perhaps others felt the same who saw the documentary?
| wmf wrote:
| I got the same impression, although just from a few scenes.
| It's impressively bad that the Newton was a "clone" of General
| Magic yet it shipped years earlier.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| General Magic also had some really dud ideas. They went to great
| lengths to spec out software "agents" that would actually travel
| to some other location and then execute there. Just imagine the
| security implications of that.
|
| It's not hyperbole to say that they missed the Internet, and this
| was at a period when the Internet was beginning to catch on. This
| is the real reason you may not have heard of them.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| "Agents" where the new hotness when General Magic was doing
| it's thing. CS depts everywhere were writing about agents,
| "everybody" imagined them as the future. It wasn't just GM that
| got this, uh, wrong.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Did they get it wrong? I've always viewed IFTTT, "function as
| a service" offerings, many of the automation systems we use
| for building and testing and deploying software, and others
| as applications of those ideas. Maybe not as full-featured or
| ubiquitous as we imagined at the turn of the century, but
| certainly still in the vein of software agents.
| wmf wrote:
| Telescript was definitely a bet against the Internet, although
| I don't know if Magic Cap even included Telescript. Palm and
| Newton didn't bet on the Internet either because mobile
| Internet may not have even existed at the time, but they didn't
| explicitly bet against it.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Palm did quite well _for a while_ with no wireless
| connectivity to speak of, other than sync 'ing with your PC.
| wmf wrote:
| Yeah, Palm didn't force people to pay for ridiculously
| expensive wireless hardware/service and they didn't try to
| invent their own alternative to the Internet.
| oautholaf wrote:
| Sort of feel it would really be helpful to replace the narrative
| of the creation of the modern smartphone ("the iPhone sprung
| forth from the head of Jobs!") with a picture of the decade+ of
| efforts made by the computer industry to make consumer
| electronics.
|
| Note also that this article mentions the Danger Hiptop and folks
| who worked on it. Some folks who worked on that worked on iPhone
| 1.0 and some even still work on iPhones!
| tpmx wrote:
| There are of course literally hundreds of products that led the
| way, in some way or another.
| Wistar wrote:
| Always liked the name "General Magic," although I like
| "Industrial Light & Magic" more.
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| Yeah, reminds me of Niven's Puppeteer's "General Products".
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-10-02 23:01 UTC)