PARC

A professor I used to TA for worked here on some creative projects with a bunch of other braniacs. The «inverse» university where there are more profs than there are students. Dudes who have so many patents they use them to prop up desks that have bad legs. Back in the day if they had only realized how to market things like «windowing» user interfaces, the computer mouse, and lord knows how many other things that have gone on and revolutionized fields like computing. Hopefully they keep innovating and putting out great products into the world…

PARC Forum
Want to stimulate your mind? I will tell you about these events… at the risk of them becoming overcrowded. But here goes… Every Thursday afternoon there is a FREE lecture at the PARC Research Center. The lectures, on various technology and related topics, are open to the public. Great presentation last Thursday: feral technologies by Dr. Genevieve Bell, the Director of the User Experience Group within Intel. In a nutshell: we create exciting new technologies here in Silicon Valley but let’s not kid ourselves that they can be contained once released to the «wild». Eg. the internet or the atomic bomb.
Anyway, check their website to see if topic of the week is of interest to you. Different topic every week.
No, I do not work here or get paid to review.
Thursday, June 3, 2010, 4:00 — 5:00 PM
George E. Pake Auditorium
Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)
This forum is OPEN to the public.

Well, for all you nostalgia-​lovers out there, who also might be geeks and/​or techies as well, let me relate my latest adventure into nostalgia land.
This morning I happened to be riding the local public transit bus in the western hills section of Palo Alto, usually considered to be the ‘Heart of Silicon Valley’, because of all the research and other corporate facilities that adorn this area west of El Camino Real in the vicinities of California Avenue, Page Mill Road, Atascadero Road and running south from SLAC and Sand Hill Road, east of 280.
Anyway, as my bus ride crossed the Foothill Expressway on Hillview, heading for the Atascadero intersection, my ride happened to pass one of Silicon Valley’s old-​time-​and-​yet-​today famous icons of modern-​day technology… the famous Xerox Corporation’s Palo Alto Research Center (commonly known as PARC).
Back in the early ’70’s, it was PARC technology that provided the basic fundamental technologies for much of the early computing platforms that began the computer ‘revolution’ here in America! The Graphical User Interface (GUI), begat not only Microsoft Windows, but also Berkeley, Linux, Unix and more such, and PARC also enabled Steve Jobs and the ‘Woz’, to create what became the first Apple computer. Here’s a ‘blurb’ from PARC’s website:
PARC works closely with varied enterprises and new ventures to discover breakthrough business and technology concepts that solve real needs, and transform how enterprises deliver value to customers. PARC takes an agile, multidisciplinary approach to open innovation — by bringing together physical, computer, biological, and social scientists who have the vision, expertise, and instinct to convert groundbreaking scientific findings into industrial-​strength prototypes.
Incorporated in 2002 as an independent research business, PARC is celebrated for such innovations as laser printing, distributed computing and Ethernet, the graphical user interface (GUI), object-​oriented programming (the basis of not only Apple, but several other famous computing platforms), and ubiquitous computing. PARC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Xerox Corporation.
For those who might be interested in this computer technology nostalgia, I understand that PARC, on Hillview Drive, can provide guided tours through the facility, if one might call them to arrange such a tour.
And No! I don’t work for PARC, Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, although I was ‘there’, once upon-​a-​time, as one of the development team members, that brought into existence the modern-​day cell-​phone technologies that we all use today (except for myself, who has quite some time back, ‘burnt out’ on such things as technology, especially corporeal ‘technologies’, and doesn’t even own or use a cell-​phone at all today!)
In fact, as a co-​founder of Quantum Zero-​Point Communications, investigating and researching ‘communications’ of a quite different ‘nature’, into Incorporeality and the worlds and dimensions thereof… I can truly say that it has been a quite long Road-​Less-​Travelled, from my early days as a Ham Radio Operator, talking ’round-​the-​world and even Pole-​to-​Pole, as well as to many famous world Leaders and Celebrities! (See my writings for details.)
Anyway, Folks, Pardon these ‘Nostalgic Ramblings’ of this Old Coot! And yet, perhaps they might be of interest to someone.

Tuesdays are Super Burrito days. The researchers teach us to get to the cafeteria early on those days so we don’t have to wait in line for twenty minutes for our extra guac. On Fridays, the cafeteria brings in a chef from Miyake to prepare sushi at lunch. Judging by his wares, he is much more experienced than the people who usually make my sushi when I have to go to Miyake. He’s also a Hanshin Tigers fan. FIVE STARS.