Jack Goldman died this month. Mac? Windows? X11? You may think of visionaries who shaped technology as you know it. You might imagine that they were the original thinkers or visionary businessmen. You're wrong. The guy who laid the foundations started out trying to invent the electric car at Ford, before being hired to Xerox creating the legendary PARC labs that invented computing as we know it; he lived to see his prediction that "...any electric car produced in our lifetime will have to be a hybrid" come true.
posted by rodgerd on Dec 24, 2011 - 17 comments

The Evolution of the Desktop 1984-2007
My oh my, how far we've come.
posted by fenriq on Aug 13, 2006 - 60 comments

Not even the duckie escapes co-optation No one disputes the XP GUI is cool. "Good Artists create, Great Artists STEAL, and Real Artists Ship" [link from nofuncharlie]
posted by otherchaz on Feb 5, 2002 - 31 comments

While the father of Visual Basic tells Microsoft to: "abandon the browser", a multitude of researchers are looking into next-generation interfaces (links via Joel on Software and Wired respectively). Is the software industry even close to moving on to a new paradigm?
posted by costas on Nov 20, 2001 - 26 comments