Chaz, you're getting a little testy here. It's not a big deal, PARC was supposed to be a cool place with lots of neat stuff, but I don't think Dynabook ever made it even to the research prototype stage that Xerox was famous for not being able to bring to market. Alto, Dorado, Ethernet and the software behind it was all cool, and unlike Microsoft, the PARC guys did good systems work beneath the glossy GUI. Dynabook was a nice concept, but that's about it, right? There was never any real hardware or software, was there? Aside from the general PARC environment, which could be considered a prototype of sorts.
Funny thing, I tried to look this up in my 1974 copy of Ted Nelson's Computer Lib/ Dream machines, but PARC didn't show up. Nelson had some good ideas too, but the Web is not particularly like his vision, and he hasn't played much role in its development that I can see. These days he's sort of a crank about the whole thing, if I recall correctly.
Cheers, Dan. |
