In 1983, it was not unusual to see an
executive, especially a manager in a computer research organization, using a
personal computer in his office. The unique thing about this personal
computer was that it was an Alto -- the first personal
computer. Taylor and his group had been using it since 1974. A small cable
connected the Alto to the Ethernet -- a medium that linked the
researchers at PARC with each other and with colleagues around the world.
The screen was taller than most computer displays, and it looked
different from other computer screens, even when seen from across the room. Instead of a single screen-sized frame
filled with numbers or letters or graphs, there were a number of squares of
various sized, known in Xerox parlance as windows, that looked
like overlapping pieces of paper on a desk. The symbols and images were also
distinctly sharper than what I was accustomed to seeing on a computer screen.
The mouse, an update of Engelbart's
innovation, was connected to the Alto with a thin wire. As Taylor slid the
mouse around the desk surface next to the screen, a small dark pointer
shaped like an arrow moved around the screen. When he clicked one of
the buttons on top of the mouse or moved the pointer into a margin, the
pointer changed shape and things happened on the screen. In 1984, Apple
corporation's Macintosh computer introduced a mass market to this way of
handling an electronic desktop. To Taylor, it wasn't particularly futuristic.
Altos and Ethernets had been in operation since 1974 around here.
By 1983, Bob Taylor was only half-satisfied with his progress toward what
he and a few others set out to achieve twenty years ago, because he believed
that the new technology was only halfway built. Despite the fact that the
office he was sitting in, the electronic workstation at his fingertips, and
the research organization around him were functioning examples of what the
augmentation community dreamed about decades ago, Taylor thought that it might take another
ten or twenty years of hard work before
the interactive informational
communities foretold by Bush and Licklider would truly affect the wider
population.
In 1965, at the age of thirty-three, Robert Taylor worked out of his
office in the Pentagon, as deputy director, then as director, of the ARPA
Information Processing Techniques Office. His job was to find and fund
research projects involving time-sharing, artificial intelligence,
programming languages, graphic displays, operating systems, and other
crucial areas of computer science. "Our rule of thumb," he remembers, "was
to fund people who had a good chance of advancing the state of information
processing by an order of magnitude."
Bob
Taylor was also responsible for initiating the creation of the ARPAnet
-- the prototype network community of computers
(and minds) created
by the Department of Defense, an effort that began
in 1966 and became an
informal rite of passage for the nucleus of people who
are still advancing the state of the computing art. Larry Roberts, who was responsible for getting the network
up and running, succeeded
Taylor when
Taylor left
ARPA in 1969. After
a year at the University of Utah,
Taylor joined the research effort Xerox Corporation was assembling near Stanford.
In 1970, a combination of growing
opposition to the Vietnam war, and the militarization of all ARPA research,
meant that an extraordinary collection of talent in the new fields of
computer networks and interactive computing were looking for greener
pastures at a time when one corporation decided to provide the greenest
pastures imaginable.
In 1969, Peter McColough, CEO of Xerox
Corporation, announced his intention to make Xerox "the architect of
information" for the future. To that end, a research organization was
assembled in Palo Alto, in the early 1970s. McColough put a man named George
Pake in charge. One of the first things Pake did was hire the best long-term
computer visionary, research organizer, and people-collector he could find
-- Bob Taylor. At first, the newly recruited engineers, hackers, and
visionaries worked in temporary quarters located in the Palo Alto flatlands,
near the Stanford University campus. In the mid 1970s construction began on
a prime piece of ground above Hewlett-Packard, next to Syntex, in that
fertile enclave known as "The Stanford Industrial Park."
