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Inventing the Future, One Lisp Machine at a Time

patrickdomanico.com

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Re: Inventing the Future, One Lisp Machine at a Time

#11

Post by matheusmoreira »

randallsquared wrote: post #10
matheusmoreira wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> use those monopoly profits to fund R&D/building items of incredible quality But why would a corporation do that when it could simply distribute those profits to shareholders?

Unless mandated, why would the people controlling a corporation (and its budget) do that? While the corp has money in the bank, it's kinda their money, in the sense that they decide what to spend it on. If distributed back to the shareholders, the money evaporates from their perspective, so there's not much incentive to do it unless it's required, or unless they will benefit by it (e.g., they have a lot of stock them…

Corporations that have gone public are essentially lost causes. CEOs are incentivized to maximize shareholder profits at all costs, and it's much easier and cheaper to enshittify than to research and develop.

I suppose it's possible for privately owned corporations to be awesome. If the guy in charge cares, awesome things will happen. Valve is the only concrete example that comes to mind.

Re: Inventing the Future, One Lisp Machine at a Time

#12

Post by watersb »

ux266478 wrote: post #2

If you find PARC interesting, and especially if you're interested in symbolic computation, I can highly recommend digging as deep as you can possibly stomach into the FGCS: https://www.airc.aist.go.jp/aitec-icot/ICOT/HomePage.html As a public research initiative, pretty much everything was published when the initiative was completed. PIMs are absolute engineering marvels. The ICOT had command of an army of the absolu…

FGCS: the Fifth-Generation Computing System

I was really excited about this initiative at the time, just starting my computer science undergrad degree.

Hardware that ran Prolog as close to bare metal as possible.

Thanks for the reminder. 40 years ago.

Re: Inventing the Future, One Lisp Machine at a Time

#15

Post by pjc50 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #8
alexpotato wrote: post #4

Rory Sutherland [0] has a great quote: "If you really want to great phenomenal items here is the plan: - enter a market - become a monopoly - use those monopoly profits to fund R&D/building items of incredible quality" A recent example of that is Apple TV. Apple makes so much money that they can fund the creation of incredibly high quality shows with basically minimal advertising. 0 - https://www.tiktok.com/@rorysuth…

> use those monopoly profits to fund R&D/building items of incredible quality But why would a corporation do that when it could simply distribute those profits to shareholders?

Shareholders will happily vote to hand all the money over to the CEO if he's charismatic enough: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-05-27/how-elon-m...

Re: Inventing the Future, One Lisp Machine at a Time

#16

Post by pamoroso »

virajk_31 wrote: post #14

"Residential programming" isn't it similar to interepreter!! Difference I can think of is it can completely rewrite something instead of updating or extending it. ex. rewrite the existing function instead of re-defining it.

The Interlisp manual defines residential programming like this:

«The "residential" style, where you stay inside the environment throughout the development, is essential for these tools to operate.»

https://interlisp.org/documentation/IRM.pdf#page=17

Re: Inventing the Future, One Lisp Machine at a Time

#17

Post by sph »

alexpotato wrote: post #4

Rory Sutherland [0] has a great quote: "If you really want to great phenomenal items here is the plan: - enter a market - become a monopoly - use those monopoly profits to fund R&D/building items of incredible quality" A recent example of that is Apple TV. Apple makes so much money that they can fund the creation of incredibly high quality shows with basically minimal advertising. 0 - https://www.tiktok.com/@rorysuth…

In other words:

- enter a market

- become a monopoly

- use those monopoly profits to maintain your monopoly

A playbook that's very much alive in all big tech companies, from Apple to Oracle.

Re: Inventing the Future, One Lisp Machine at a Time

#18

Post by zipy124 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #8
alexpotato wrote: post #4

Rory Sutherland [0] has a great quote: "If you really want to great phenomenal items here is the plan: - enter a market - become a monopoly - use those monopoly profits to fund R&D/building items of incredible quality" A recent example of that is Apple TV. Apple makes so much money that they can fund the creation of incredibly high quality shows with basically minimal advertising. 0 - https://www.tiktok.com/@rorysuth…

> use those monopoly profits to fund R&D/building items of incredible quality But why would a corporation do that when it could simply distribute those profits to shareholders?

Because you have the belief that you can generate a better ROI internally invested. Returning cash to shareholders is usually a negative sign for the company as it means they don't think they believe other companies will be better with the investment than themselves.

It's only recently in the share-buyback age that this investment is rarer.

The classic example is Amazon which was technically profitable for a while, but did not return shareholder cash for many many years, choosing to invest instead.

Re: Inventing the Future, One Lisp Machine at a Time

#19

Post by RetroTechie »

pamoroso wrote: post #16
virajk_31 wrote: post #14

"Residential programming" isn't it similar to interepreter!! Difference I can think of is it can completely rewrite something instead of updating or extending it. ex. rewrite the existing function instead of re-defining it.

The Interlisp manual defines residential programming like this: «The "residential" style, where you stay inside the environment throughout the development, is essential for these tools to operate.» https://interlisp.org/documentation/IRM.pdf#page=17

Does this need anything beyond interactive REPL? If so: what?

Re: Inventing the Future, One Lisp Machine at a Time

#20

Post by dosisking »

alexpotato wrote: post #4

Rory Sutherland [0] has a great quote: "If you really want to great phenomenal items here is the plan: - enter a market - become a monopoly - use those monopoly profits to fund R&D/building items of incredible quality" A recent example of that is Apple TV. Apple makes so much money that they can fund the creation of incredibly high quality shows with basically minimal advertising. 0 - https://www.tiktok.com/@rorysuth…

> Apple makes so much money that they can fund the creation of incredibly high quality shows with basically minimal advertising.

But Apple has not created any high quality shows.

Simply throwing money at something does not automatically make it good.

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