Xerox PARC in the 1970s had, IIRC (not sure!), three main groups - the computing group, the physics group, and a third group.
The computing group gets all the praise. What were the other two groups? And what did they do?
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I believe so, though it was a kinda fluid org… really there was Bob Taylor’s gang and The Rest.
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Dealers of Lightning is the best book about PARC. Fumbling the Future is more of a polemic but less respectful. I’d recommend reading both if interested. Also Copies in Seconds, the og Xerography story, provides context from the copy/print history. They’re not quite villains.
Full disclosure, though I worked with PARC folks, I was in the Webster (Wilson) research center which is often cast as the villain mothership print research center in the PARC story but isn’t really.
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Also (parts of) The Dream Machine by Mitchell Waldrop could be informative on this topic


