Dealers of Lightning

Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age
Michael Hiltzik

(Alan) Kay observed, “Everybody has to be able to play the whole game. Each person should have certain things they’re better at than the others, but everyone should be pretty good at everything.”
pg. 116

“In the course of one frustrating encounter (Alan) Kay blurted out the line destined to become his (and PARC’s) unofficial credo. “Look,” he said, “the best way to predict the future is to invent it!”
pg. 122

“when two people disagree and neither can explain to the other person’s satisfaction that other person’s point of view, he said. A Class Two disagreement is when each can explain to the other’s satisfaction the other’s point of view. Class Two disagreements enable people to work together even when they disagree. Class One is destructive.”
pg. 182

“Yet every organization of human beings eventually comes to cherish its own orthodoxies, and PARC was no different.”
pg. 229