Computers for Cynics 2 - It All Went Wrong at Xerox PARC

Thank you. Nelson does a great job enumerating the limitations of PARC's vision and the capabilities absent from PARC's work. After being exposed to PARC's self-congratulatory self-promotion for decades, Nelson's history is a breath of fresh air. This is not to devalue what PARC accomplished, but that its accomplishments must be taken in perspective. It All Went Wrong at Xerox PARC is also on YouTube: link to this video

It's Ted Nelson rattling through some of his computer-history notes on camera. So it's good material, but it's much better presented in his enjoyable and reasonably-priced book /Geeks Bearing Gifts/ link . I noted a couple of apparent mistakes: at link to this video Nelson says that Xerox paid Jobs to look at the PARC work, while AFAIK Apple in fact paid Xerox, in pre-IPO Apple stock. He also suggested that Xerox tried to bring in Jobs, when it seems to have been Apple who made the approach (at the instigation of Jef Raskin at Apple). link to this video is misleading. PARC was more-or-less forbidden to buy a DEC PDP-10, which would have reflected badly on the competing machines from Xerox's new acquisition Scie…

This comment jogged my memory of a Ted Nelson video subtitled 'It all went wrong at Xerox PARC' : link to this video