2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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XEROX PARC
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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/zeeroks park/ , n. The famed Palo Alto Research Center. For more than a
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decade, from the early 1970s into the mid-1980s, PARC yielded an astonishing
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volume of groundbreaking hardware and software innovations. The modern mice,
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windows, and icons style of software interface was invented there. So was
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the laser printer and the local-area network; and PARC's series of D
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machines anticipated the powerful personal computers of the 1980s by a
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decade. Sadly, the prophets at PARC were without honor in their own company,
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so much so that it became a standard joke to describe PARC as a place that
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specialized in developing brilliant ideas for everyone else. The stunning
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shortsightedness and obtusity of XEROX's top-level suit s has been well
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anatomized in Fumbling The Future: How XEROX Invented, Then Ignored, the
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First Personal Computer by Douglas K. Smith and Robert C. Alexander (William
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Morrow Co., 1988, ISBN 0-688-09511-9).
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