Xerox was essentially the hot startup of the 1960's, and it's interesting how similar many of the issues and attitudes were back then, including fears that copying would destroy the publishing industry, struggles with no longer being a startup, and resentment from older industries.
In the opinion of some commentators, what has happened so far is
only the first phase of a kind of revolution in graphics. “Xerography
is bringing a reign of terror into the world of publishing, because it
means that every reader can become both author and publisher,” the
Canadian sage Marshall McLuhan wrote in the spring, 1966, issue of
the American Scholar. “Authorship and readership alike can become
production-oriented under xerography.… Xerography is electricity invading the world of typography, and it means a total revolution in
this old sphere.”
...
Dr. Dessauer threw a retrospectively distracted glance at the ceiling
and went on, “Hardly anybody was very optimistic in the early years.
Various members of our own group would come in and tell me that
the damn thing would never work. The biggest risk was that electrostatics would prove to be not feasible in high humidity. Almost all
the experts assumed that — they’d say, ‘You’ll never make copies in
New Orleans.’ And even if it did work, the marketing people thought
we were dealing with a potential market of no more than a few thousand machines. Some advisers told us that we were absolutely crazy
to go ahead with the project. Well, as you know, everything worked
out all right — the 914 worked, even in New Orleans, and there was
a big market for it. Then came the desk-top version, the 813. I stuck
my neck way out again on that, holding out for a design that some experts considered too fragile.”
...
McColough said that since he came to Haloid, in 1954, he felt he’d
been part of three entirely different companies — until 1959 a small
one engaged in a dangerous and exciting gamble; from 1959 to 1964
a growing one enjoying the fruits of victory; and now a huge one
branching out in new directions. I asked him which one he liked best,
and he thought a long time. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I used to
feel greater freedom, and I used to feel that everyone in the company
shared attitudes on specific matters like labor relations. I don’t feel
that way so much now. The pressures are greater, and the company is
more impersonal. I wouldn’t say that life has become easier, or that it
is likely to get easier in the future.”
"Xerography is bringing a reign of terror into the world of publishing, because it means that every reader can become both author and publisher,”"
One of major issues with publishing was distribution. Merely having the tools (back then) to create printed content was not the same as being able to put it in the hands of people that would want to read the content. Without the distribution (or the money to advertise) it didn't matter that you could run off copies or even if you owned your own printing press and bookbinding operation. You still had to get the product in the hands of the public.
It's not hard to distribute your information. Wordpress.com, Youtube, etc. make this extremely easy.
It's hard to get people to care about what you have to say enough that they keep reading it, but making text available to people (well, people with internet access) who want to read it has been entirely solved for more than 10 years.
It's not even hard to distribute if you want to sell it. You can upload it to Amazon and it'll be for sale anywhere on the planet in less than a day (they claim 12 hours or less). Likewise for Barnes & Noble, Apple, and the rest (Apple is the slowest...it can take up to a couple of weeks, but that's still amazingly fast compared to the year or more of lead time for old-school print).
"but it's still hard to distribute your information."
In a sense because of the increased competition (and increased content available) it's even harder.
Otoh, in theory the hard work has shifted and it is possible to get your info distributed in a "diy" fashion. For example you could write a blog, get a following, and sell a book. I'm sure if PG came out with a book there would be a market for it. Back in the day a PG would have to convince a publisher that there was a market for what he wanted to write. So it's really a shifting of the work needed to get distributed.
“To set high goals, to have almost unattainable aspirations, to imbue people with the belief that they can be achieved — these are as important as the balance sheet, perhaps more so,” Wilson said once, and other Xerox executives have often gone out of their way to emphasize that “the Xerox spirit” is not so much a means to an end as a matter of emphasizing “human values” for their own sake
Funny how this philosophy has become a prerequisite in the startup world, to the point where even trivial apps with best-case success scenarios of modest profitability must be sold with promises of changing the world (or at least an entire industry), and backstories in which their hyper-focused product, based on 3-year-old technologies, has been the founder's passion since he was 10 years old....
"All the evidence suggests that communication between people by whatever means, far from simply accomplishing its purpose, invariably breeds the need for more.)"
I see lately a lot of buzz about Bill Gates. Is he coming back as CEO? Is this marketing campaign?
imho Bill Gates is not the person to follow when talking about business. He missed multiple big chances calling them a bubble like internet, mobile and much more. He get where he is out of stealing Windows from Apple, bullied software programmers and created extremely closed environment.
He was person non grata decade ago, but recently people make him a legend... I wonder why the retreat of majority of web society...
And there was a time Steve Jobs was considered a failure who was considered more show than substance. Times change. And time has a way for letting the important persist while forgetting the non-essential.
"The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation didn’t just bankroll the development of what became known as the Common Core State Standards. With more than $200 million, the foundation also built political support across the country, persuading state governments to make systemic and costly changes.
Bill Gates was de facto organizer, providing the money and structure for states to work together on common standards in a way that avoided the usual collision between states’ rights and national interests that had undercut every previous effort, dating from the Eisenhower administration."
I have never been a hater and respect the man, but knowing that he had a role in promoting Common Core actually lowers my opinion of him considerably.
Have you seen what ridiculous methods they're requiring children to learn in math? No longer can teachers be reasonable by allowing you to solve a problem your own way, as long as you show your work and get the right answer. All this has done is remove parents from the teaching process. I only know about math from my younger cousins and friends who are teachers, but I'm sure some of the other subjects have their own issues.
> No longer can teachers be reasonable by allowing you to solve a problem your own way, as long as you show your work and get the right answer.
Suppose after a week of lectures on sorting, you ask your students to implement a sorting algorithm. From one student, you get back a 400 line monstrosity that somehow, miraculously, does the right thing. Do you shrug it off and say "as long as it works", or do you grow very concerned that the student is somehow missing the forest for the trees, even though they arrived at an apparently correct answer?
In my experience teaching, it's far more likely that the student doesn't understand some basic, necessary underlying concepts than that the student is very bright and was trying to come up with a super optimized sorting algorithm. Both will exist, and you have to differentiate. The worst bit is that often the idiots know this, and imagine themselves to be super intelligent, so they're impossible to teach.
IMHO "just get the right answer" has never been a reasonable way to teach math.
> All this has done is remove parents from the teaching process.
I hear this a lot. We're basically just talking about different ways of doing arithmetic or multiplication.
It's akin to bitching and moaning because someone taught your kid insertion sort, and you only know bubble sort so now you can't teach your kid sorting.
Is the problem that the curriculum developers are being obtuse, or is the problem that many parents and teachers never really had a deep enough understanding addition/multiplication/division in the first place?
It's pretty scary how few of our elementary/middle school teachers -- who teach math -- cannot differentiate from the definition of addition (a set of axioms), and algorithms which implement addition. Because they don't know the difference between a specification and an implementation, teaching multiple implementations seems silly. But it's not silly at all, and the difference between the definition of a thing and an algorithm matching the definition is something our elementary, middle and high school students can, should, and hopefully will understand -- unmotivated and stubborn teachers/parents be damned.
It's overblown hype. Kids should understand multiple algorithms for addition/subtraction/multiplication/division for the same reason that we teach CS undergrads multiple sorting algorithms.
The point isn't to be able to pound out a sorting algorithm on the spot, but that learning about sorting algorithms provides a good "prototype" of thinking about algorithms more generally. Ditto for mathematical operators.
The problem is that parents never really had a deep understanding of even basic arithmetic. It's a self-reproducing cycle, and the USA will continue to lag behind the rest of the developed world in mathematics if our primary standard is "how the past generation did things".
>What age groups are affected by Common Core?
K-12
> I wonder if this helps or hurts the homeschooling crowd.
Ostensibly helps, because more teaching aids/material will be available, and knowing several algorithms to achieve the same thing helps you understand the concept in a much deeper way.
Actually it doesn't matter, because home schoolers aren't obligated to follow CC standards, and are likely to treat anything CC-related as pure unadulterated evil without actually evaluating pedagogical evidence.
You are discounting a LOT of Bill Gate's history. Yes, he did miss the "internet", (as someone who worked with Microsoft in Australia) he literally turned the company around in 6 weeks.
But if you still say Bill "missed" the internet, you are discounting Netscape vs IE wars.
The internet in the 90's was a very different place to the internet today.
But before that, Bill Gates got a lot right! Eg Excel vs Lotus, Word vs Word Perfect, Windows vs OS. The whole history of DOS.
As others have said, its like saying Steve Jobs is a failure because he was sacked by the company he founded (Apple).
Why do you think my perception bias is more important than other's?
Did I say that? Or did I stated my opinion?
I think I just said imho - which means in my honest opinion and I gave some facts. I didnt say nothing else.
And as of person non grata - check old posts, forums and "memes" from 10 years ago. All is there. People didnt really liked him.
Xerox was essentially the hot startup of the 1960's, and it's interesting how similar many of the issues and attitudes were back then, including fears that copying would destroy the publishing industry, struggles with no longer being a startup, and resentment from older industries.
In the opinion of some commentators, what has happened so far is only the first phase of a kind of revolution in graphics. “Xerography is bringing a reign of terror into the world of publishing, because it means that every reader can become both author and publisher,” the Canadian sage Marshall McLuhan wrote in the spring, 1966, issue of the American Scholar. “Authorship and readership alike can become production-oriented under xerography.… Xerography is electricity invading the world of typography, and it means a total revolution in this old sphere.”
...
Dr. Dessauer threw a retrospectively distracted glance at the ceiling and went on, “Hardly anybody was very optimistic in the early years. Various members of our own group would come in and tell me that the damn thing would never work. The biggest risk was that electrostatics would prove to be not feasible in high humidity. Almost all the experts assumed that — they’d say, ‘You’ll never make copies in New Orleans.’ And even if it did work, the marketing people thought we were dealing with a potential market of no more than a few thousand machines. Some advisers told us that we were absolutely crazy to go ahead with the project. Well, as you know, everything worked out all right — the 914 worked, even in New Orleans, and there was a big market for it. Then came the desk-top version, the 813. I stuck my neck way out again on that, holding out for a design that some experts considered too fragile.”
...
McColough said that since he came to Haloid, in 1954, he felt he’d been part of three entirely different companies — until 1959 a small one engaged in a dangerous and exciting gamble; from 1959 to 1964 a growing one enjoying the fruits of victory; and now a huge one branching out in new directions. I asked him which one he liked best, and he thought a long time. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I used to feel greater freedom, and I used to feel that everyone in the company shared attitudes on specific matters like labor relations. I don’t feel that way so much now. The pressures are greater, and the company is more impersonal. I wouldn’t say that life has become easier, or that it is likely to get easier in the future.”