[HN Gopher] Can Xerox's PARC find new life with SRI?
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Can Xerox's PARC find new life with SRI?
Author : mitchbob
Score : 62 points
Date : 2024-03-27 17:34 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| mitchbob wrote:
| https://archive.is/2024.03.27-144438/https://www.nytimes.com...
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Only about 15 minutes in and it's much more illuminating than
| the article (not saying that the article is bad, but this video
| is better).
| snsr wrote:
| Gift link w/o paywall:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/26/business/sili...
| anotherhue wrote:
| Can researchers spend 10 years there doing meaningful research
| without:
|
| a) Having to show product market fit and appease magpie investors
|
| b) Emerge after 10 years with devastating debt and with poor
| career prospects.
|
| Those answers are what matters.
| klysm wrote:
| that doesn't sound very agile /s
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Why would they emerge with devastating debt if they were paid
| reasonably well all along? (I am with you on the other points)
| anotherhue wrote:
| Postdocs tend to be paid poverty wages, so if they have
| student loans those won't have been paid. Additionally if
| they emerge at 30-something but on the lowest run of the
| career ladder they may never catch up.
|
| Obviously less of an issue if well paid, but well paid
| academia is kind of a contradiction.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I think you are reading the past with the eyes of the
| present.
|
| "Student debt" was not a thing back in the 70's and 80's.
|
| Secondly, PARC researchers were not paid university
| postdoc-level salaries. They were paid quite well. I would
| guess that's still true.
| linguae wrote:
| I'm away from home right now so I can't verify this, but
| if I remember correctly from reading _Dealers of
| Lightning_ , Xerox PARC researchers were paid the
| equivalent of six figures when adjusted for inflation.
| When considering the much lower housing prices in Silicon
| Valley in the 1970s, this enabled many PARC researchers
| to purchase homes in Palo Alto and vicinity, though I do
| recall a passage from _The Dream Machine_ about people
| moving from other parts of the US to the Bay Area dealing
| with higher housing costs even in the 1960s and 1970s. My
| mom grew up in Oakland in the 1960s and she told me she's
| always heard of people complaining about the Bay Area's
| high cost of living, especially in San Francisco.
| linguae wrote:
| As a researcher, it would be wonderful if there were an
| industrial research lab again that doesn't demand immediate ROI
| (like how most industrial research labs sadly demand) and also
| avoids the "publish or perish" pressures of academia. Rather, my
| ideal lab would be dedicated to providing an environment that
| enables researchers to pursue ambitious visions that will change
| computing. Xerox PARC would easily return to its former glory if
| it returned to its style under Bob Taylor in the 1970s. In fact,
| it would be quite fitting if Alan Kay gets tapped to run the lab.
|
| While there's a need for more directed short-term research, I
| feel that industry has largely moved away from more free, longer-
| term, "pure" research, and I also feel that academic research has
| become affected by "publish or perish" and fundraising demands.
| There seems to be no room these days for researchers who want to
| do more exploratory work, short of becoming independently wealthy
| or relegating such exploration to nights and weekends.
| rented_mule wrote:
| I would love to see the glory days of pure research groups like
| PARC and Bell Labs return. But, so many business folks are
| aware of how Xerox was embarrassed by PARC that it's unlikely
| that approach will be tried again anytime soon. When I speak of
| embarrassment here, it's not about the incredible innovation
| that came out of PARC, but about Xerox management's handling of
| that innovation.
|
| Billions and billions (trillions?) of dollars in value was
| created (e.g., Adobe, 3Com, SGI-NVIDIA, Mac / Windows, laser
| printers, ethernet, etc.) based on their research, but ~0% of
| that value went to Xerox. From a business point of view, it was
| a disaster. And business folks are primarily the ones deciding
| what's funded at this level. If I'm an executive who's not sure
| if I, or my organization, will be able to tell the great ideas
| from the duds, why spend money that might expose that?
| coliveira wrote:
| > business folks are primarily the ones deciding what's
| funded
|
| A large part of the money that was funned into research at
| Xerox came from the government itself in the form of tax
| breaks and other benefits. So it was not a big sacrifice for
| Xerox to maintain that lab. If they had to change course was
| due to government policy becoming less interested in
| industrial innovation and more focused on offshoring and
| financial gains for the last decades.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > A large part of the money that was funned [sic] into
| research at Xerox came from the government itself
|
| Do you have any support for that? For example, Xerox's
| financial disclosure forms should still be available.
|
| Because I think it's wrong. The government funded academic
| projects, not commercial ones.
| coliveira wrote:
| You don't need to look so far away: tax breaks for R&D
| are still a thing, in the 70s and 80s they were even more
| important for these giant companies. Government contracts
| were also a big income source for Xerox, AT&T, IBM, and
| others. Moreover, research labs were basically a method
| for companies to move discoveries from publicly funded
| Universities into private hands. They naturally benefited
| from receiving graduates and discoveries that started on
| publicly funded research institutions.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| >>> When I speak of embarrassment here, it's not about the
| incredible innovation that came out of PARC, but about Xerox
| management's handling of that innovation.
|
| You mean like google and ML and Attention is All You Need...
|
| Or let's look at what a group of people with brains and money
| went on to do: the PayPal mafia. Would they not be the modern
| day version of att/unix(a product of anti
| trust)->Berkley/Unix->and the foundation of the valley (sun,
| most databases)...
| bruce511 wrote:
| Between laser printers and photo copiers (built on laser
| printer tech) Xerox did just fine.
|
| If anything, Xerox's "willingness" (intentional or not) to
| allow the root ideas to grow in various places has been a
| blessing to the IT industry as a whole.
|
| What you are suggesting is they could, or should, have become
| all the companies you listed. But that would gave been both
| impossible, and counter productive.
|
| Steve jobs saw the GUI, and Ethernet, and object orientated
| programming, and laser printers, and office software, and yet
| Mac is famous for just the GUI. Others would run with
| networking, programming, MS with office and do on.
|
| And in addition to those major players there were lots of
| others competing too.
|
| So no I don't think Xerox management needs to be embarrassed.
| They saw the value printing and ran with that. They left
| others to develop the other ideas. And in the long run we are
| much richer for that.
|
| So, from me anyway, there's no shame on them, rather a tip of
| the hat, and a nod to the vision they had to create PARC in
| the first place. They are the giants on whose shoulders we
| stand.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > From a business point of view, it was a disaster.
|
| Dead wrong. Laser printers alone were a $2B a year business.
| Printers, especially big ones, were right in their
| wheelhouse.
|
| If you want to argue it could have been so much more wealth,
| you're right.
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| As brilliant as Kay is, I'd be hesitant to put an 83 year-old
| as an active leader. I could see him in an emeritus/advisory
| role, however.
| matt_s wrote:
| There should be a balance though, an open ended research lab
| that is a non-profit and generates ideas is going to have a
| tough time getting funding.
|
| Maybe this research lab should partner with something like YC
| so when an idea is nearing a production quality design, VC's
| can fund it to product fruition with some sort of royalty
| agreement with the research lab to fund more ideas.
|
| I would think a lot of highly technical, actual scientists (not
| some dude who's been hacking at CRUD web apps for a couple
| decades, aka me) would love to work at a place where constant
| academia/VC pressure is set aside to allow more pure research
| to happen.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Bell Labs could do this because their parent company was a
| government sanctioned monopoly that didn't have to worry about
| about mundane problems like quarterly earnings. Xerox had the
| copier machine market pretty well to itself for a good 20 years
| which enabled them to fund PARC (sure, there were some
| competitors in that time, but they weren't taking a huge bite
| out of Xerox's profits yet).
|
| I think Apple could've done this a few years back when they had
| something like $100B cash on hand - they could have established
| a research foundation and provided it with funding that
| would've lasted for long enough for it to become self
| sustaining. Maybe Apple still could do this as they've got $73B
| cash on hand. $10B would go a long ways towards establishing an
| institution like this. Even better if other FAANG companies
| joined by providing seed funding, but maybe that looks too
| anti-competitive these days? (the incentive for providing
| initial funding could be a stipulation that funding companies
| get a break on IP license fees)
|
| Of course, as someone else mentions in this thread, this
| institution should learn from PARC's mistakes and do a better
| job of licensing their IP in order to keep operating for a
| longer term.
|
| I suspect we really need something like this. Bell Labs (and
| PARC) gave our economy a technological boost that it wouldn't
| have had without them. Maybe a revitalized SRI (with some
| additional outside funding) could become what you're talking
| about?
| akozak wrote:
| Figuring out the right amount of endowment is quite
| difficult, but you certainly need a LOT to get the outcomes
| like PARC. Are you running it off interest or burning down
| the pot? Also possible that we are simply in a different
| techno-economic and scientific moment than those researchers
| were (ie it was cheaper for them).
|
| Also once you start framing it as investment or a biz
| decision in a big public company, the natural question is
| whether it's the best use of capital for Apple. It's not
| really about short vs longterm thinking either, it's about
| the deployment with the highest likelihood to return on any
| timeframe.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > Are you running it off interest or burning down the pot?
|
| At some point in the future there should be some IP that
| could be licensed.
|
| If you're starting out with, say, a $10B endowment there
| should be investments that could sustain a certain level of
| operation for quite a long time until that IP license
| income kicks in. Towards the end of the article they talk
| about the land that PARC is situated on and how that's now
| very valuable and will provide a source of income for the
| new SRI/PARC - so they seem to have lucked out with a real
| estate investment that they didn't realize at the time
| would payoff later.
| trhway wrote:
| >if there were an industrial research lab again that doesn't
| demand immediate ROI
|
| wasn't for example OpenAI exactly that? The difference from the
| old times here seems to be that any advances are easily
| monetized today due to gigantic VC available, and thus the
| immediate ROI demand immediately arises from inside - from the
| employees, from the CEO down to lowest rank-and-file, who see
| the immediate potential to turn the advance into billions on
| the spot. Imagine if Alan Key and his colleagues could turn
| their inventions into billions in the next few months after
| making those inventions - I doubt they would have let Jobs to
| take the tour and practically steal the IP.
| linguae wrote:
| You brought up something very interesting that I wish more
| people emphasized when discussing PARC. Alan Kay and his
| colleagues were not indifferent to business, far from it. In
| fact, they actively tried to get Xerox to commercialize their
| technologies. Many of them got frustrated and either joined
| other companies (Alan Kay went to Atari before going to
| Apple, Larry Tesler joined Apple before Alan Kay did, Charles
| Simonyi went to Microsoft and took Bravo with him, which
| helped lead to Microsoft Word) or started their own (Adele
| Goldberg started PARCPlace to commercialize Smalltalk).
| foobiekr wrote:
| One of the underappreciated reasons both Bell Labs and PARC
| worked was they actually hired a lot of people who had already
| established themselves. One of the problem with young
| researchers, no matter how nobly minded, is that they will play
| the game. A PARC today would have almost no chance to avoid
| becoming a trend following mess.
|
| This is part of how they avoided the ROI catastrophe
| (researchers with enough cred could argue that there was a long
| term potential) and the publish or perish issues.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > Xerox executives had always responded that though they did not
| successfully compete in the computer market, they got a huge
| return on their investment by commercializing the laser printer
| technology PARC invented.
|
| >But many researchers who were at PARC's halcyon early days said
| that its strength was that their research was unconstrained by
| the need to create a specific product -- a notion that seems hard
| to imagine in today's product-oriented Silicon Valley.
|
| The "but" is not necessary there. Both are true. Printers became
| a $2B a year business.
|
| Coulda been so much more? Absolutely.
| readyplayernull wrote:
| Wait, how much did they get from selling Apple the UI and
| mouse?
| linguae wrote:
| $200,000 net ROI from a $1.2 million sale of Apple's pre-IPO
| shares in 1979 or 1980 dollars, though it could've made much,
| much more had Xerox held on to those shares:
|
| https://livingcomputers.org/Blog/What-Really-Happened-
| Steve-...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| excellent.
|
| Jerry Morrison and I analyzed in depth what they _should_
| have done:
|
| https://www.albertcory.io/lets-do-have-hindsight
|
| Most people don't know that, in the 80's, they DID spin off
| a number of companies, where Xerox's only investment was a
| license to use the technology.
|
| Had they held onto Apple and all those, they'd be one of
| the biggest holding companies in the world, if not _the_
| biggest.
| readyplayernull wrote:
| Amazing! Please do an HN submit.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| You cannot blame the blatant lack of business vision and
| business acumen on researchers.
| woodson wrote:
| Not sure, but the mouse was invented at SRI.
| jmspring wrote:
| Every time I see Parc mentioned, I miss going their for various
| talks. A friend worked there in the AV department and I got to
| see a lot of talks I would not otherwise. I also loved showing up
| one time when they had an exhibit of David Huffman's paper
| folding -
|
| https://mitmuseum.mit.edu/collections/collection/david-a-huf...
|
| Parc, HP Labs, etc. were places of innovation back in the day -
| even things going on well into the 2000s.
|
| Sadly most companies don't do or value that type of research
| anymore.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Reminds me: I THINK I heard PARC was going to resume those
| evening talks. No details, sorry.
| skadamat wrote:
| Highly recommend reading Scientific Freedom (published by Stripe
| Press in fact) which touches on the important topic of the
| shrinking freedom in professionalized scientific research:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Freedom-Civilization-Donal...
| lispm wrote:
| Alan Kay recently gave a talk touching similar topics:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZQ7x0-MZcI
| kensai wrote:
| This: "Whatever happened to Xerox's $1.05 million dollar
| investment in Apple in 1979? Had Xerox held onto this stake of
| the company, approximately 5-8% of the total outstanding equity
| in Apple at that time, their investment could be worth tens of
| billions of dollars today. Famously however, Xerox did not even
| retain their stake until Apple's 1980 IPO. Instead, they almost
| immediately turned around and sold their shares for approximately
| $1.2 million, netting a return on their investment of around
| $200,000. Apple and their competitors, inspired by PARC's
| inventions, would go on to generate trillions of dollars of
| revenue over the coming decades selling desktop personal
| computers with bitmapped displays and mouse-driven GUIs just like
| the Xerox Alto."
|
| What a facepalm! >_<
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > _PARC could be revived only if Mr. Parekh could find a way to
| build some "slack" into the system by finding money to support
| open-ended research projects. SRI may have found that slack. The
| research laboratory is located in Menlo Park, Calif., in walking
| distance to the San Francisco to San Jose commuter rail line on
| 63 of Silicon Valley's most valuable acres._
|
| Are they saying that they'll raise the money by doing real estate
| development? Could work, they certainly don't need all of the 63
| acres. Or maybe they don't need any of those 63 acres? They could
| sell all of it off and move SRI/PARC to some much cheaper area of
| the country.
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