The Innovators( How a Group of Hackers Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution)[INNOVATORS][Hardcover]

1. Ada, Countess of Lovelace
   • Poetical Science
     • Child of poet Lord Byron, Ada lived from 1815-1852
     • Met and friended Charles Babbage when she was 17.
     • Babbage invented the difference engine which was a mechanical mammoth which could calculate polynomial functions and differential equations
   • Ada
     • Lady Byron didn’t want Ada to turn out like her father so made her study math to cure poetic imagination
     • Babbage wanted to make a general purpose machine, the Analytical Engine
     • Ada made connection it could process not only numbers but any symbolic notations
   • Lady Lovelace’s Notes
     • She translated Menabrea’s Scientific Memoirs and added “Notes by the Translator”, which became more famous than the article
     • Explored four concepts in her notes 1) general purpose machine that could be programmed 2) symbols and logic, not just numbers 3) step-by-step detail on workings of programs or algorithms 4) Table and diagram step by step on how algorithm would be fed into the computer
     • Babbage never got funding and machine never got built
2. The Computer
   • Intro
     • Herman Hollerith was census employee who was appalled it took 8 years to count the census so devised punch card system and census took one year
     • His company became IBM
   • Digital Beats Analog
     • Digital machines count discrete and distinct integers like 0, 1, 2, 3
     • Analog use continuous functions such as pressure, voltage, etc
     • Modern computers based on digital
     • Binary worked better because circuits composed of on-off switches
     • Electronic components allowed faster operations
     • WW2 helped advance field
   • Alan Turing
     • In 1937, published “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidunsgproblem”
     • Came up with concept of a logical computing machine (Turing Machine)
   • Claude Shannon and George Stibitz at Bell Labs
     • Shannon figured out that electrical circuits could execute Boolean logical operations with on-off switches
     • Wrote thesis “A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits” showing how many functions of Boolean algebra could be executed
     • Became basic concept underlying all digital computers
     • George Stibitz took Shannon’s concepts and made a calculating machine
   • Howard Aiken
     • Aiken was struggling to do tedious calculations for physics thesis
     • Lobbied to build calculating machine started building Mark I with IBM
   • Konrad Zuse
     • Built series of mechanical calculating machines
     • In 1941, first fullly-working, all purpose, programmable digital computer
   • John Vincent Atanasoff
     • Built calculating machine using vacuum tubes
     • Was not programmable and multipurpose.
     • Sole purpose was to solve simultaneous linear equations
     • Did not get finished, only known in history because of lawsuits w/ John Mauchly
   • John Mauchly
     • Taught Physics at Ursinus College
     • Yearned for a machine to do tedious calculations
     • Decided to built vacuum tube computer
     • met Atanasoff at meeting
   • Mauchly-Atanasoff
     • Atanasoff showed off partially built machine
     • Mauchly impressed by use of condensers in memory unit
     • Mauchly claims was disappointed because not electronic and only single purpose
     • Decided to build computer in 1941 partnered with J. Presper Eckert (Engineer)
   • ENIAC
     • Artillery required tables that calculated for hundreds of conditions
     • Mauchly wrote memo “The Use of High Speed Vacuum Tube Devices for Calculating”
     • US War Department decided to fund
     • ENIAC was digital and decimal
     • Used conditional branching, could hop around in a program
     • Fully functional in 1945 could perform 5000 additions and subtractions in one second
   • Bletchley Park
     • Another vacuum computer secretly built called Colossus
     • First all-electronic, partially computable computer for breaking German wartime codes
   • So, Who Invented the Computer?
     • Looking at definitions it should be electronic, general purpose, and programmable
     • ENIAC is first that has all these traits
3. Programming
   • Intro
     • Loading a new program was a laborious process involving replugging cables by hand
     • Next major step in creation was figuring out how to store programs
   • Grace Hopper
     • Ph.d in Math, worked with Aiken, Mauchly and Eckert
     • Focused on writing well and communicating clearly, which made her a good programmer
     • Wrote first computer program manual which included history
     • IBM commissioned own history of Mark I with focus on organizational history over individual history
     • She perfected practices of subroutines and compilers which would facilitate writing the same program for multiple machines
   • The Women of ENIAC
     • At first, programming was seen as routine and menial which is why may have been relegated to women
   • Stored Programs
     • Mauchly and Eckert knew there were ways to make ENIAC easier to reprogram, but thought would make more complicated so didn’t in the beginning
     • They would need large memory capacities
   • John Von Neumann
     • Mentor to Turing, reaped most credit for stored-program architecture
     • Became consultant for ENIAC, helped realize the importance of computer’s ability to modify its stored program as it ran
     • Hard to parse where ideas came from, in collaborative group ideas bounce around
   • The Public Unveiling of ENIAC
     • Demonstrated for public in 1946
     • Many of the women programmers snubbed
   • The First Stored-Program Computers
     • Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp formed in 1946
     • Became famous when predicted election results
     • Two machines with distinction for first stored-programs: updated ENIAC and Manchester Baby
     • Academics didn’t focus on computers so innovation shifted to corporate realm; Ferranti IBM, Remmington Rand, and Honeywell
   • Can Machines Think?
     • Turing Question: is output indistinguishable from a human?
     • Turing stated if it could learn it would develop own conceptions about how to figure things out
4. The Transistor
   • Intro
     • Computers did not immediately launch a revolution because too big and costly
     • Transistors could amplify an electrical current and switch on and off. Like steam engine to industrial revolution
   • Bell Labs
     • Bell Labs pulled together collaborative teams to come up with new ideas
     • In 1930’s study of solid-state physics (how electrons flow through solid-materials) became increasingly important
     • Bell Labs was trying to find ways to create new material because vacuum tube filaments were burning out too quickly
   • William Shockley
     • Given mission to find a replacement to vacuum tubes with device more stable, solid, and cheap
   • The Transistor
     • When semiconductor is charged, electrons become trapped shielding interior from influence of charged control plates
     • Put a tiny drop of water on silicon, coated a piece of wire with wax to insulate, and jabbed the wire through the water drop into the silicon
     • From this point-contact contraption the transistor was born
     • Able to amplify voltage
   • Shockley’s One-Upmanship
     • Became driven to make a contribution
     • Instead of jamming gold points into a slab of germanium, envisioned a simpler junction approach like sandwiches
     • In a presentation a scientist was presenting theoretical basis for junction device
     • Shockley revealed his designs before anyone could make any suggestions
   • Transistor Radios
     • Bell Labs good at innovation but not capitalizing on them so licensed patents
     • Pat Haggerty worked at Texas Instruments came up with idea of using transistors in small pocket radios
     • Trend of technology becoming more personal and spread music and technology in culture
   • Setting the World on Fire
     • Shockley was not great leader, passed up for promotions
     • Left for California wanted to start new business in Palo Alto where he was raised and near family
     • Palo Alto was small college town but starting to grow due to defense industry and Cold War spending
     • Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett started selling electrical measuring instruments in 1938
     • Set up Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory as a division of Beckman Instruments
   • Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore
     • Noyce studied math and physics and went to MIT for doctorate
     • Moore studied chemistry in Berkely and got doctorate from Caltech
     • Shockley recruited a dozen engineers all under thirty
   • Shockley Unravels
     • Shockley very bad leader, delusional and paranoid
     • Eight engineers including Noyce and Moore decided to leave
     • Raised money from Sherman Fairchild, owner of Fairchild Camera and Instrument, and formed Fairchild Semiconductor
     • Space programs propelled demand for computers and transistors
     • Needed computers small enough to fit on rocket’s nose cone
5. The Microchip
   • Intro
     • As number of components in circuit increased, number of connections increased
     • Texas Instruments and Fairchild Semiconductor solved this by creating an integrated circuit, or microchips
   • Jack Kilby
     • Kilby worked in Texas Instruments
     • Came up with idea that you could make a junction in a piece of silicon act as a capacitor, meaning it could store a small electrical charge
     • From that came up with “monolithic idea”, you could take all components in one monolithic piece of silicon eliminating need for circuit board
   • Noyce’s Version
     • Transistors not working well, too many kept failing
     • Came up with planar process or building up layer of oxide
   • Protecting Discoveries
     • Texas Instruments and Fairchild sued each other and decisions kept swinging
     • Noyce ultimately won after a decade of back and forth, but meant very little
     • The companies had hammered out a peace treaty to cross-license because market for microchips was exploding so rapidly
   • Microchips Blastoff
     • Military first major market
     • New entrants resulted in plummeting prices
     • Fairchild avoided partnerships where military was too involved, believed if product was good, they would buy
     • First prototype chip for Apollo Guidance computer was $1000 by production time $20
     • After pushing pocket radios, Haggerty came up with idea for pocket calculators
   • Moore’s Law
     • Moore predicted number of transistors crammed onto microchip was doubling every year and expected to continue for 10 years
     • Former Fairchild employees defected and started own businesses
     • Noyce grew tired of bureaucracy and reached out to Arthur Rock to start another business
   • Arthur Rock and Venture Capital
     • Initially venture investing realm of wealth families
     • Started Integrated Electronics Corp which was shortened to Intel
   • The Intel Way
     • Innovation more than physical products
     • Intel gave rise to a new corporate culture and management style antithesis of hierarchical organization
     • Noyce and Moore had an aversion to hierarchy and an unwillingness to be bossy
     • Andy Grove would be the confronter and became third person at Intel
     • “By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, Germany military occupation, the Nazis’ Final Solution, the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint.”
     • Grove realized that Druker’s ideal CEO (an outside person, inside person, action person) could be embodied in different people
     • Had culture of meritocracy
     • Noyce detested Eastern corporate system of class and status
     • Grove helped instill culture that was driven, focused, and detail-aware
   • The Microprocessor
     • Tod Hoff at Intel imagined a general-purpose chip that could be instructed or programmed
     • Previously microchips were special purpose
     • Ushered in subtle shift in electronics industry from hardware to software
     • Microprocessors allowed for smaller computers
     • In 1970’s the microprocessor spawned hundreds of new companies making hardware and software for personal computers
     • HP, Stanford industrial park, William Shockley, Fairchild and Fairchildren created a bustling corridor of technology
     • Columnist Don Hoefler wrote series entitled Silicon Valley USA and name stuck
6. Video Games
   • Intro
     • Hardcore hackers who believed in the “hands-on imperative” and entrepreneurs eager to break into amusement games industry led to video games
     • Video games important lineage in personal computers
   • Steve Russell and Spacewar
     • Hacker subculture and seminal video game Spaceware emanated from MIT Tech Model Railroad Club
     • Members of the Signals and Power Subcommittee tended to the relays, wires, circuits and crossbar switches
     • Embraced term hacker with pride (connoted technical virtuosity and playfulness)
     • Important moment was when the Digital Equipment corporation donated the prototype of its PDP-1 computer to MIT
     • Steve Russell was best programmer in group influenced by science fiction made a spacewar game
     • Spacewar highlighted three aspects of hacker culture: 1) it was created collaboratively, 2) it was free and open-source software, and 3) based on belief that computers should be personal and interactive
   • Nolan Bushnell and Atari
     • Loved spacewars, concocted plan to turn computer into an arcade video game
     • Sold idea to Bill Nutting and joined Nutting Associates
     • Produced computer space, a stripped down version of spacewars, but didn’t do well in beer halls
     • Bushnell left to start own venture and called it Atari
   • Pong
     • Saw a version of ping pong at a trade show
     • Made very simple and called it pong
     • Atari hit on one of most important engineering challenges of computer age: creating user interfaces that were radically simple and intuitive
     • Atari core: authority should be questioned, hierarchies should be circumvented, nonconformity should be admired, creativity should be nurtured
     • Initial machine did very well, but sued by Magnavox, which had an initial version
     • Bushnell paid flat low fee of $700,00 for perpetual rights on condition that Magnavox enforced its patent on other companies, protecting Atari
7. The Internet
   • Vannevar Bush’s Triangle
     • Internet built from partnership of three groups: military, universities, and private corporations
     • Vannevar Bush was most important person for forging this triangle: dean of MIT school of engineering, founder of Raytheon, and top military science administrator during WWII
     • In July 1945, Bush produced report at Roosevelt’s behest that advocated government funding of basic research in partnership with universities and industry
     • “Basic research leads to new knowledge. It provides scientific capital. It creates the fund from which the practical applications of knowledge must be drawn.”
     • He emphasized that basic science was crucial for national and economic security
     • Resulted in proliferation of hybrid research centers: RAND, SRI, ARC, and Xerox PARC
   • J.C.R. Licklider
     • Born 1915, pioneered the two most important concepts underlying the internet: decentralized networks and interfaces that would facilitate human-machine interaction in real time
     • Licklider became adherent to man-computer symbiosis approach
   • Time-sharing and Man-computer Symbiosis
     • Helped pioneer systems for computer time-sharing with John McCarthy (spacewars)
     • Many terminals hooked up to mainframe, which could keep track of multiple users and multitask
     • Published Man-Computer Symbiosis in 1960
     • “The hope is that, in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today”
   • Intergalactic Computer Network
     • Licklider became head of ARPA in 1962
     • Mission to study how interactive computers could facilitate flow of information
     • Thought of simple concept: network
   • ARPANET
     • Had idea to connect research computers through phone lines
     • Forced organizations to join or else would withhold funding
     • Packets helped solve problem of allowing multiple data streams to share lines simultaneously
   • Packet Switching
     • Files are broken into packets and routed to end address through whatever link is available at the time
     •  A completely distributed system ensured communication would remain intact in case of massive attack
   • Was it Nuke-related?
     • Yes and No
     • Higher ups funded because of national security reasons
     • Some people who were working on it did for other reasons
   • One Giant Leap: The Arpanet has landed October 1969
     • UCLA, Stanford Research Institute (SRI), University of Utah, and UC Santa Barbara became first nodes of ARPANET
     • RFC or Request for Comments became process that pioneered open-source development
     • RFCs produced a set of host-to-IMP standards by end of 1969
   • The Internet
     • Robert Kahn set out to join networks to create an “internetwork” which was shortened to internet
     • Wanted common protocols so computers could link without requiring a translation system
     • Internet Protocol (IP) specified how to put packet destination in header and helped determine how it would travel through networks
     • Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) instructed how to put packets back together
   • Networked Creativity
     • Internet was built on belief that power should be distributed
     • Encouraged peer-to-peer connections
8. The Personal Computer
   • As We May Think
     • Vannevar Bush wrote in 1945 with idea of a mechanized private file and library
     • Corporations were focused on large industrial computers and didn’t think consumers would want or need
     • In 1970’s personal computer revolution was driven by entrepreneurs in strip malls and garages
   • The Cultural Brew
     • Personal computer most enabled by microprocessor
     • SF Bay area ripe for producing homebrewed computers
     • Engineers from defense contractors, startups (Intel, Atari)
     • Three countercultural strands: 1) Hippies, 2) New Left activists, 3) Whole Earth communalists
     • Shared many values: DIY, individualism + associations, resistance to power elites
     • Computers first viewed as tools of corporations, but with advent of personal computers became symbol of individual expression and liberation
   • Stewart Brand
     • Embodied intersection between techies and hippies
     • Convinced NASA to take photo of Earth and started Whole Earth Catalog
   • Douglas Engelbart
     • Wanted to contribute to the world by helping handle complexity and urgency
     • Looked for ways to allow people to visually portray the thinking they were doing
     • Was less interested in Artificial Intelligence, more in augmented intelligence
   • The Mouse and NLS
     • Engelbart looked for easy ways for people to point and select something on a screen
     • Inspired by planimeter, designed the mouse
     • Went on to develop on-screen graphics, multiple windows on screen, digital publishing, blog-like journals, wiki-like collaborations, document sharing, email, instant messaging, hypertext linking, video conferencing, and formatting documents
   • The Mother of All Demos
     • Demoed what a networked computer could do in 1968
     • Collaborated with distant colleagues to create a document, make edits, add graphics, changed layouts, built a map, embedded audio and visual elements in real-time
   • Alan Kay
     • Alan Kay realized that small personal computers would have graphical displays easy enough for a kid to use and cheap enough for every individual to own
   • Xerox Parc
     • Xerox launched a pure research lab
     • Kay called personal computer project Dynabook
     • Request for creating Dynabook was denied
     • He created an interim computer, but realized Xerox was not at forefront of innovation
     •  “The computer will never be as important to society as the copier” was he response he got
   • The Community Organizers
     • Homebrew Computer Club first held meeting in 1975 Menlo Park
   • Ed Roberts and the Altair
     • Ed Roberts was an Entrepreneur focused on hobbyists
     • Started in electronic calculator business, but when prices plummeted, business when severely into debt
     • Shifted business to DIY computer kits
     • Not technologically advanced, but pent-up demand from hobbyists
     • First computer Altair 8800 launched personal computer industry
9. Software
   • Intro
     • Bill Gates and Paul Allen wanted to create software for personal computers
     • Wanted hardware to be interchangeable commodity with profits in software
   • Bill Gates
     • In high school, had a teletype terminal that connected to a general electric mark II over a phone line
     • Learned BASIC and wrote many programs
     • Allen had a mind that would flit among many ideas and passions
     • Gates was a serial obsessor
   • The Lakeside Programming Group
     • C-Cubed, a computer time-sharing company, had bought a computer and could use free while debugging, so asked Lakeside group to do whatever they could to keep making crash
     • In return, could program as much as they wanted
     • Gates and Allen came to appreciate importance of computer’s operating system
     • Wanted to drill down so learned assembly code
     • Offered services to company called ISI for programming time, had to write a payroll program
     • Older boys kicked out Bill, but asked him to come back, he said he would, but he would be in charge
     • Helped Bonneville Power Administration with grid management system
   • Gates at Harvard
     • Spent a lot of time at computer lab
     • Sense of urgency and fear that hey would be left behind when Altair was featured on Popular Electronics
   • Basic for the Altair
     • Gates and Allen set out to build programs on the Altair
     • Allen flew to meet Ed Roberts and ran the first software program for a home computer
     • Roberts agreed to license the BASIC interpreter and offered Allen Job
   • Micro-Soft
     • Gates dropped out of Harvard and moved to Albuquerque
     • Gates’ intensity allowed Microsoft to meet insane deadlines
     • Quick, fast, and cheap. computer manufacturers rarely thought of writing or controlling their own software
   • Software Wants to Be Free
     • Homebrew club copied BASIC code and shared
     • Gates was enraged, but helped his company in long-run because dissemination helped make Microsoft a standard
   • Apple
     • Steve Wozniak was a member of the Homebrew Club
     • He was a hardware engineer at heart
     • Met Jobs through a friend and they worked on a device that could emit the right tone to make free long-distance calls
     • Jobs dropped out of Reed college and joined Atari
     • Learned importance of keeping interfaces friendly and intuitive
     • He wasn’t the best engineer, but good at getting people to do things
     • When Wozniak saw Altair, he had idea of combining computer, keyboard, and screen
     • Jobs had desire to sell easy-to use packaged products
     • Felt computer should be more like an appliance, everything should be tightly integrated
     • Apple II was first personal computer to be simple and fully integrated
     • Jobs was perfectionist who believed in controlling user experience end to end
     • Trend moved other way however, and software became king
   • Dan Bricklin and Viscalc
     • Bricklin created the first financial spreadsheet program
     • Developed for Apple II because Wozniak had made its architecture open and transparent enough
     • Helped catapul Apple II to triumph, quickly followed by word-processing
   • IBM Operating System
     • IBM wanted to develop personal computer in less than year
     • Knew they had to license software from outside so approached microsoft
     • Microsoft bought QDOS from Tim Paterson spruced it up, and licensed to IBM
     • Two provisions very important in deal: 1) license was nonexclusive. Gates could license to other makers 2) MS would keep control of source code
     • MS was able to turn the IBM PC and its clones into interchangeable commodities
     • Focus would be on softwre
   • The Graphical User Interface
     • Xerox PARC developed GUI
     • Apple worked out deal in exchange for allowing Xerox to make a million-dollar investment
     • GUI possible by bitmapping, which allowed each pixel to be controlled
     • Incorporated new technology in Macintosh in 1984
   • Windows
     • In 1980’s, MS and Apple were on good terms
     • Jobs wanted Gates to write new software for the Macintosh
     • Jobs was worried MS would copy GUI, so included clause in contract that they couldn’t make for a year
     • Unfortunately, Macintosh launch was delayed
     • MS launched new operating system with GUI called Windows
     • Courts ruled that apple couldn’t get patent for idea of a GUI or idea of a desktop metaphor
     • Windows reached 95% market share in 2000 since it ran on any hardware
   • Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, and Free and Open-source software movements
     • Stallman worked at MIT AI Lab and believed software should be collaboratively created and freely shared
     • Embarked on mission to create an operating system that was free. GNU (like UNIX)
     • Was having difficulty with kernal, which manages requests from software programs and turns them into instructions for the computer’s central processing unit
     • Linus Torvalds from communist and academic family
     • Loved computers and technology, learned machine language
     • Not impressed with MSDOS so started creating a copy of MiNIX (UNIX clone)
     • Stared becoming an operating system that could serve as kernal for UNIX-like operating systems
     • Called it Linux and decided to offer freely hoping other people would help improve
     • Led to massive, decentralized, non-hierarchical collaboration
     • Decisions based on technical merit rather than personal considerations
     • Governance structure by consensus naturally emerges, people know who has been active and who they can trust
     • In 1990’s, 3 models for software development: 1) tightly integrated apple approach, 2) unbundled from hardware microsoft, and 3) free and open-source
     • Provided a check against any one model becoming so dominant that it stifled innovation
10. Online
    • Intro
      • Internet and personal computer grew up apart from one another
      • ARPANET was not available to ordinary people
      • Didn’t intertwine until late 1980’s
    • Email and Bulletin Boards
      • At ARPANET email quickly became main method of communicating
      • In 1973, study showed email accounted for 75% of traffic on ARPANET
      • Led to virtual communities
    • Modems
      • Modems could modulate and demodulate analog signals
      • AT&T had monopoly over phone system, but by 1975 the FCC opened the way for consumers to attach electronic devices to the network
    • The Well
      • Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, launched an on-line community, THE WELL
      • Participants could not be anonymous
    • America Online
      • William von Meister was serial entrepreneur
      • Started The Source to link home computers via telephone lines into networks with bulletin boards, messages, news, guides, etc
      • One of first consumer orientated online services, sold to reader’s digest
      • Started CVC to sell streaming music through cable TV networks
      • Steve Case worked at P&G and learned about consumer preferences joined CVC
      • Jim Kimsey, ex special forces, was made CEO of CVC
      • Reconfigured company to create on-line links to boards and chats for companies
      • Initially did for companies, but decided to unbundle and make their own
      • Started America Online with main focus on community building
    • Al Gore and the Eternal September
      • In 1993, barriers were lowered and internet was made available to everyone
      • Every September since, new wave of college freshman would get access
      • Al Gore became punchline of joke, but actually was very involved in getting the internet up for everyone
      • 1986, he launched a congressional study that looked at topics such as super computers, connected research networks, bandwidth, and increased access
      • He led to the High Performance Computing Act of 1991 and Scientific and Advanced Technology Act of 1992.
      • These allowed commercial networks to connect with research networks
      • In 1992, he pushed the National Information Infrastructure Act of 1993, which made Internet widely available to the general public
      • Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, two people who created Internet protocols, spoke up on his behalf, “No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President”
11. The Web
    • Intro
    • • In 1990’s almost anyone could get connected, but it was a murky jungle with no maps
      • The invention of the worldwide web, helped solve this problem
    • Tim Berners-Lee
    • • Realized computers were good at crunching numbers, but not making random associations and links
      • Thought about a single global information space, a web of information
      • Wanted to build collaborative playground, hit upon hypertext, which links people to another document
      • Created Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to allow hypertext to be exchanged online and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) for creating pages
      • Robert Cailliau helped bring idea into fruition, called idea World Wide Web
    • Marc Andreessen and Mosaic
    • • Andreessen helped develop Mosaic, first easy-to-install web browser with graphic capabilities at University of Illinois
      • Berners-Lee didn’t like direction, felt like it was becoming a publishing platform rather than place for collaboration
    • Justin Hall and How Web Logs became blogs
    • • Justin Hall posted on diverse range of things
      • Sharing personal information helped develop a social network
    • Ev Williams and Blogger
    • • Focused on online collaboration
      • Was working on Pyra Labs which offered web-based applications that allowed teams to collaborate
      • Friction with posting on personal website so wanted to streamline process so started blogger.com
      • Everyone quit, worked on by himself, eventually sold to Google
      • Came to appreciate community aspect, went on to co-found Twitter
    • Ward Cunningham, Jimmy Wales, and Wikis
    • • Cunningham developed wikis which allowed users to edit and contribute without needing a password
      • Wales enthralled by encyclopedia, but felt lacking and couldn’t keep up with what was happening in world
      • Developed Nupedia, but process was too stringent
      • Wikipedia focused more on collaboration and exploded
      • The crowed itself became an expert
      • Wikipedia was decentralized and rules grew organically
      • Not only allowed everyone to have access to almost any information, but allowed people to become part of the process
    • Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Search
    • • Yahoo used a mix of crawlers and directories updated by hand
      • Larry Page studied business as well as computer science, wanted to make something people would use
      • Sergey Brin studied math and computer science became mesmerized by the Web
      • Page joined human-computer interaction group and became adherent of user-centered design: interface must be intuitive and user was always right
      • Brin focused on data mining at Stanford
      • Page thought of idea of downloading entire web and just keep the links
      • Thought of ways to assess the value of each page based on number and quality of links, became foundation of search engine
      • Climactic leap in relationship between humans and machines
      • Google approach seems automatic, but leverages billions of human judgments made by people when creating links from their own websites
12. Ada Forever
    • Lady Lovelace’s Objection
    • • Two important inventions: 1) microchips allowed for small size and 2) packet-switched networks allowed them to be connected as nodes on a web
      • Allowed digital creativity or “poetical science” per Ada Lovelace
      • She believed machines would never truly think or originate ideas
      • AI field seems to be always twenty years away of major breakthrough
      • John von Neumann realized architecture of human brain is fundamentally different from how computers work
      • Human mental processes include many signal pulses and analog waves from different nerves
      • Many super computers aren’t thinking, but really megadoses of computing power
      • Took scientists forty years to map neurological activity of a round worm with 302 neurons and 8,000 synapses. Humans have 86 billion neurons and 150 trillion synapses
    • Human-Computer Symbiosis: “Watson, come here”
    • • Ada believed humans would bring originality and creativity
      • Augmented intelligence occurs when machines become partners with people
      • Richard Brautigan, in his poem “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace” expressed that dream “a cybernetic meadow / where mammals and computers / live together in mutually / programming harmony”
      • Team that built Deep Blue and Watson goal not to replicate human beings
      • In 2005 chess tournament,  teams of human plus machines dominated
      • First generation of computers were machines that counted and tabulated
      • Second generation could be programmed
      • Third generation will learn
      • Goal could be finding ways to optimize the collaboration between human and machine capabilities
    • Some Lessons from the Journey
    • • Creativity is a collaborative process
      • Most productive teams were those that brought together people with a wide a array of specialties
      • Physical proximity is beneficial and people are more innovative when together
      • Visionaries without execution became lost in the footnotes of history
      • Combination of government, market, and peer sharing led to strong innovation
      • Most successful leaders fostered collaboration and clear vision
      • They were also product people that deeply cared about engineering and design
      • Man is social animal, many tools were used for connection and communicating
    • Ada’s Lasting Lesson: Poetical Science
      • Important part people bring is creativity
      • Those who helped lead technology revolution were people in the tradition of Ada, who could combine science and the humanities
      • Next phase of Digital Revolution will bring even more new methods of marrying technology with the creative industries
      • Innovation will come from people who are able to link beauty to engineering, humanity to technology, and poetry to processors
      • People who can flourish where the arts intersect with the sciences and who have a rebellious sense of wonder that opens them to the beauty of both