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Larry Tesler Has Died

gizmodo.com

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Re: Larry Tesler Has Died

#151

Post by impeachgod »

danmaz74 wrote: post #128
alankay wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the people who were at Parc who are still alive are still doing research. Pretty much only one wanted to get rich (and did). Several were more or less forced into becoming rich. Money has its own dynamics and none of these folks wound up doing further research. But Butler Lampson (the "Oppenheimer" of Parc) is still going strong, as am I and many others. It was a calling, never a job.

> Pretty much only one wanted to get rich (and did). Metcalfe?

I think Alan Kay is referring to Charles Simonyi. According to Forbes, his net worth is $4.3 billion: https://www.forbes.com/profile/charles-simonyi/

Re: Larry Tesler Has Died

#152

Post by jdswain »

impeachgod wrote: post #151
danmaz74 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretty much only one wanted to get rich (and did). Metcalfe?

I think Alan Kay is referring to Charles Simonyi. According to Forbes, his net worth is $4.3 billion: https://www.forbes.com/profile/charles-simonyi/

I was thinking of Eric Schmidt. A quick check shows a net worth of $14.7 billion.

Re: Larry Tesler Has Died

#154

Post by pmcjones »

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote: post #101

Does anyone else find it strange that there’s rarely any mention of cause of death in Wikipedia? Is it uncouth to ask how someone passed away?

Markoff's obituary [1] in the New York Times says, "The cause was not known, his wife, Colleen Barton, said, but in recent years he had suffered the effects of an earlier bicycle accident."

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/technology/lawrence-tesle...

Re: Larry Tesler Has Died

#157

Post by alankay »

neonate wrote: post #156
alankay wrote: post #155

A very nice remembrance by John Markoff in the NYTimes: https://mail.yahoo.com/d/folders/1/messages/AOkUKy0vu8HQXk9u...

That link doesn't work for me, but these do: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/technology/lawrence-tesle... http://archive.md/J7bOw

Thanks!

Re: Larry Tesler Has Died

#159

Post by exdsq »

alankay wrote: post #125
oblio wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anyone from Parc still involved in research these days? Or is everyone retired or just chugging along at regular corporate jobs?

Most of the people who were at Parc who are still alive are still doing research. Pretty much only one wanted to get rich (and did). Several were more or less forced into becoming rich. Money has its own dynamics and none of these folks wound up doing further research. But Butler Lampson (the "Oppenheimer" of Parc) is still going strong, as am I and many others. It was a calling, never a job.

Looking at all of the work that came out of Parc during your time there... What drew you to that company to begin with? I find it amazing that so many of the Big Names in computer science/software engineering came from the same place.

Re: Larry Tesler Has Died

#160

Post by alankay »

exdsq wrote: post #159
alankay wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the people who were at Parc who are still alive are still doing research. Pretty much only one wanted to get rich (and did). Several were more or less forced into becoming rich. Money has its own dynamics and none of these folks wound up doing further research. But Butler Lampson (the "Oppenheimer" of Parc) is still going strong, as am I and many others. It was a calling, never a job.

Looking at all of the work that came out of Parc during your time there... What drew you to that company to begin with? I find it amazing that so many of the Big Names in computer science/software engineering came from the same place.

Parc was an "extension" or "outgrowth" of the ARPA (before the "D") sponsored computer research in the 60s that was catalyzed by Congress overreacting to Viet Nam protests and changing ARPA's charter for the worse.

ARPA/Parc as a community had the best and most enlightened funding for computing research starting in 1962 (Parc started in 1970), and a very large percentage of the familiar technologies of today -- including personal computing, tablets, dynamic OOP, the GUI, the Internet, etc -- were invented by it.

The best (and pretty accurate) book about this remarkable group is "The Dream Machine" by Mitchell Waldrop.

Bob Taylor, who had been a director of the ARPA computing research, looked for a way to fund some of the "ARPA Dream" projects that Congress was curtailing, and found Xerox (which wanted to set up a longer range research lab).

Taylor was particularly interested in recruiting a number of the young Phds that ARPA had funded, and I was one of them.

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