Ask HN: Where is the next Xerox PARC? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Where is the next Xerox PARC?

7 pointsbergie13 comments

PARC invented much of today's technologies - from desktop computers to networking and even iPads. While the company didn't manage to bring much of that into market, it has shaped the whole world of computing we do today.

The question is, what is today's Xerox PARC? Is there a well-funded research lab somewhere that is doing such radical research that it will bring us the computing of next thirty years? Or is everybody doing just short-term applied stuff now?

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I would say it's Google in terms of the energy and caliber of people working there, but there's a fundamental difference between Google and Xerox PARC. Research is tightly integrated with production at Google; Ph.D's are expected to code to the production infrastructure, and their work tends get released within 6 months to a year instead of 30 years later. That means that there isn't a huge store of undiscovered prototypes to be discovered by Steve Jobs in 10 years.

There are some advantages to this, though. Personally, I like being able to visit a foreign website and have Chrome automatically translate it. Or talk (!) to my mobile phone (!) and have it automatically use my location (!) to make sense of my query and answer it (!). I like being able to virtually visit any place on earth and walk around on the streets. My e-mail inbox knows which messages are important and which are spam. I think it's wonderful that Google Search can give me straight answers to most of the queries I throw at it.

Most of these were virtually unimaginable just over 5 years ago.

No, the cool new use of existing technology, while fantastic, is not transformational; it will eventually run out. In my opinion: they have some cool Crazy Ivan projects but nothing really serious, and while it may run counter to what feels like common sense, Google is not like PARC at all.

I'm not sure I agree with the premise of your comment, in particular that this is all "existing technology". The problem is that once something is productionized and available to the masses, of course it's "existing technology". That does not make it any less innovative when developed.

Ask yourself: if all Google products, in their current incarnations, were still a research project at Stanford that nobody was using, and we all still used AltaVista to search, and Hotmail for webmail, and MapQuest for maps, and then suddenly the Google project was unveiled to the public and commercialized by another company (let's call it "Gapple"), would the accomplishment be any less than how we view Xerox PARC today?

As Steve Jobs says, "real artists ship".

would the accomplishment be any less than how we view Xerox PARC today?

Most certainly. Remember, PARC never shipped. Instead they created the foundation upon what we ship with today. AltaVista and Hotmail weren't horrible experiences. Google provided an incremental boost to these that made them, yes, much more powerful. But it was evolution, not revolution. PARC was all about Revolution.

Of course Steve Jobs says, "real artists ship." He took what PARC created and shipped it and made money. He advanced the state of the market. PARC advanced the state of technology. That's the difference.

Man, judging by such mythical stuff as the "Courrier Tablet", that cool "Surface" whathchaisit, and a host of other theoretical stuff i hear all the time, i would venture, as weird as it might sound, Microsoft Research...

There's Microsoft's problem right there, they can't ship innovative, risky products, due to their overdependence on the twin Windows/Office franchise. Classic case of Innovator's Dilemma.

I think it is microsoft as well. The bureaucracy shoots down any good ideas, so the inventions languish. Just like at xerox parc

Photosynth is pretty awesome.

Along the same lines people in physics ask all the time: where is the next Bell Labs?

Maybe the question is better stated as: Where are the next Xerox PARC people?

You have it exactly right. Most of the transformative research being done right now is outside of major companies and outside America.

Can you give us some statistics on that?

I like to think of the startup world as a distributed version of PARC. Not sure how accurate it is--but still a neat thought.

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