Monday night at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, with the commingling of people like Bob Marsh and those from Vlab.org was magical. The story of the current tech boom was born in the love of revolution that Steve Wozniak talked about. And he gives us a few thoughts on why he thought Homebrew wouldn’t want him:
Hilda Sendyk, without whom there would have been no 38th Homebrew Reunion.
Glass and I. I recorded the past and found the future. Ok glass, take a picture, record tomorrow, and google my possibilities. Homebrew was where you were conceived. 23andme can find it in your DNA.
Full disclosure: if you know me you know I dislike Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
My Facebook page looks like I died several years ago. I don’t understand circular logic so Google+ was not made for me.
LinkedIn is like a kiosk with a resume on it. I asked them not to announce when I changed anything and they went ahead and did so. I sent them the following – let’s see if they are social enough to answer:
“I put my settings so that no one would be notified of updates. Today I find out you have been sending my activity to everyone. What good are settings if you don’t pay attention to them?”
A wonderful gathering of foundational history, alive and in person (and on robot teleconference in one case) in Mountain View, CA tonight. It was Homebrew Computer Club’s 38th birthday celebration and they invited the public. We had young and old, and it was great to hear the stories and just as wonderful to see the generation that follows. They understood there would not be the tech industry they are so much a part of were it not for the early days of Homebrew. So we heard Woz and Lee Felsenstein and others tell us they were about democratizing computers – putting computers in the hands of the people. This was revolutionary, they said and it certainly was.
I tried on Google glass. The juxtaposition of a story from Woz or Lee or Bob and “Ok glass” was phenomenal. (Ok glass is the voice command for Google glass to show you its menu of actions such as record a video or search or take a picture) “Reality expands to fill the available fantasies.” was the best descriptor tonight of the journey from then to now. From Peoples Computer Company, from Gordon French’s garage to ‘Ok, glass’
But is Google glass revolutionary? No, it is evolutionary. Power will not be taken from the government or a corporation and put in the hands of the people. That was Homebrew’s job. And they did it so well. Even though the method of human interaction may now be forever changed, make no mistake, Google Glass is designed to make money for Google. Google glass is FUN. Wearable computing is here, but it will not put people in control or democratize anything.
Evolution is a good thing and I applaud all the work that goes into the dynamics of the new, new things. The fantasies and dreams are huge and wonderful and game changers. But this is not a revolution. That’s ok. They happen when it is time. That time was celebrated tonight.
The Palo Alto Daily Post reports that the incredible Roth building on Homer Ave. that formerly housed The Palo Alto Medical Foundation (prior to its incarnation in a building that looks like a minimum security prison), is finally coming to life as The Palo Alto History Museum and it sounds awesome. A coffee bar, conversation hubs, and a wall that allows you to talk, real time, to people across the world. And accessible archives! Finally – a museum that integrates the past, present and future. We here at The Silicon Valley Story really like that idea , look at our tagline. This concept is the Silicon Valley Story – a dynamic, alive, creative, always fascinating, place that builds on the past (which may mean yesterday or 50 years) and constantly invents the future in the present. Frustrating, expensive…yes, that too.
So 2 thumbs up to museum President Rich Green for not just making history come alive but making history based on the rich flavor of creativity and startupness that is the DNA of Palo Alto and Silicon Valley. Love your ideas for the museum – thanks for not making this another musty, dusty visual sleeping pill.
But I have a question for Mr. Green. Did you really say, “This is not your grandmother’s museum.” Because if you did, oh mine heart be still. Not only is this your grandmother’s (did we really pick old AND female as stereotypes?) museum but your grandfather’s too. And maybe even the generation before. These are exactly the people that built this valley – today’s grandparents – and even then, one generation before in at least one case I can think of. Your lovely museum is only a tiny walk away from the HP garage and house on Addison. Surely Dave and Bill would be great grandparents by now and aren’t many of the original Homebrew Computer Club grandparents, or could be?
The point is not to pick on this one unfortunate comment but to highlight stereotypes of life here. Yes, we have hundreds of startups and 20 somethings who practice their pitches constantly and say, “If Zuck can do this, so can I.” Yes, you probably can if persistence, luck and creativity come together for you as they did for Mark. You dreamers and creators, you are awesome in so many ways and you are the bearer of tradition in all your new, new things. But we must not, especially here, ever forget those who brought you the tech that makes the talking wall, the 3dprinting, the hole in the wall startup a reality.
Let’s make this a positive: This is your grandparents museum…and yours and yours and everyone else who found their way here on the wave of a dream and created together ‘The Silicon Valley Story’. And don’t forget – these same grandparents also brought you sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. Let’s give credit where credit is due – and go Calico, go so we can keep the grandparents for a very long time. (Don’t know what Calico is? It’s Google reinventing time of death: See CALICO)
Thanks to Cambrian Genomics for that incredible, credible tag line – democratizing creation. It fast tracked me into the future as it caught me unawares and fascinated at the same time. Cambrian can 3D bioprint DNA. We can create creatures because we can code and de-code.
We live in code hacking times. Yesterday it might have been Deconstructing Code, but that is passe. As we teach coding in K-12 with funding from Zuckerberg et al, and every daddy of a princess wants her to ditch the tiara for a coding career, we also have DNA being decoded, democratized, synthesized and sold as consumer product. (soon) Want to make a dinosaur? Okay.
We already have 3 parent babies with DNA inserted from a 3rd party into an IVF embryo. Now, we have Cambrian bioprinting synthetic DNA and suggesting, as one example, 2 gay men can now make a baby with both their DNA.
So, what are we disrupting besides the usual dance of the genitals to conception? Well, the billion dollar + fertility industry for one. I don’t care about that. They use desperation as a cash cow anyway since they know 50% of treatments end in failure with repeats as desperation increases with age. These MD’s are con artists, let them go the way of the dodo bird, bookstores and travel agents. And of course we are disrupting the foundation of anyone who thinks the Bible or Koran or Talmud is a source of scientific information.
But where’s the critical disruptive element? Where is it most defiantly (and frightfully?) displayed? In the products of conception – the children of the triad parental paradigm and DNA and a complex identity and ancestry, with a new language to learn, the language where we understand the words mother and father as obsolete. Their identity is compromised before they are born; identity theft is built in.
Existential angst is not a hypothetical here when a kid can’t answer the basic question, “Who am I?”. You sure you want to design-a-kid with bioprinted synthetic DNA? The answer will be ‘yes’, of this I am sure because mankind has always gone to the unknown and sought and mapped new terrain. Now the terrain is baby land.
Everything is code: we can read the DNA code, and replicate it. We can code now for plastic fantastic lovers, or cuddly, designed to spec, genetic children.
Zip line me to the future – I can deal with it because I have no choice. But do you really want to make a generation who has genetic confusion built in? Identity theft as birthright? Linguistic analysis needed: what is a mother, a father?
Define family. Not in squishy, sentimental terms that only make the adults comfortable. “A mother is the one who stays up all night when you are sick.” Oh, please – that’s not a mother, that’s a nurse. Mother is the one who raises you and mother is the one who births you. Sometimes they are one and the same and sometimes not. In that case we have the legal and the biological. Kids can understand, but only if you do and explain it right. Skip the sentimental approach. It does the kid no good.
Democratize the language and prep the culture. Democracy is never easy, and I suspect democratizing conception and creation will be the most difficult democratic experiment we have tried out yet. Bon chance, kiddos – brother of another mother and another and another and a father and another and another. Yes, you are different. Eventually, we will embrace you for that and call it diversity. But first, you will undoubtably suffer.
Parents to be of bioprinted DNA kids: be sensitive, smart and role play until YOU GET IT: you are monsters breeding sweethearts.
A new breed of children of 3 or more parents and synthetic DNA? This is real disruptive innovation, this democratizing of creation. The invisible cloud buddy, if he was, and if he could, he would, chuckle.
As he was dying and the DMT expressing itself, Steve Jobs said, “Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow.” Yea, like he said.
A big and great reunion is in the works from the founders, great and small, known and unknown, of the computer industry. November 11, 2013 is the next Homebrew Computer Club Reunion at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.
I love the start ups, apps, clouds, dreamers, failures, and wild success stories. 10 million from Kickstarter? You go Pebble! see The Pebble story here
I love how everyone is constantly reinventing themselves and disturbing tech is the new, new,new thing. (The new, new thing is so old now.) But the latest app and start up (and Philz Coffee) is here because of those who gathered together to share information, chips, and good times. Whether you are crowdfunding, just got funded or dreaming up a pitch that outdoes all others, you are here because of those who came before. A lot of that credit goes to Homebrew and company..
Without computer clubs there would probably be no Apple computers. Our club in the Silicon Valley, Homebrew Computer Club, was among the first. It was in early 1975, and a lot of tech-type people would gather and trade integrated circuits back and forth. You could have called it Chips and Dips. We had similar interests and we were there to help other people, but we weren’t official and we weren’t formal. Our leader, Lee Felsenstein, who later designed the Osborne computer, would get up at every meeting and announce the convening of “the Homebrew Computer Club which does not exist” and everyone would applaud happily.
The theme of the club was “Give to help others.” Each session began with a “mapping period,” when people would get up one by one and speak about some item of interest, a rumor, and have a discussion. Somebody would say, “I’ve got a new part,” or somebody else would say he had some new data or ask if anybody had a certain kind of teletype.
During the “random access period” that followed, you would wander outside and find people trading devices or information and helping each other. Occasionally one guy would show up and say, “Is there anyone here from Intel? No? Well, I’ve got some Intel chips we want to raffle off.”
And that’s why some of you are here today to pitch a VC. And it is why I ended up knowing Paul Sciarro, first CEO of Pinterest and told my list about Pinterest before it got funded and was in pre-beta. The ripples are felt everywhere by all of us in one way or the other.
Learn more about the reunion from 2 original members of Homebrew, Hilda Sendyk and Lee Felsenstein in this Forbes article.
See you there! Here’s a post and pics from the one in 2001: SLAC in 2001
We like big data here. We apply metrics and massage it for messages. Here’s some big data of an unsettling sort.
I visited El Palo Alto the other day. It’s 1073 years old. That’s an impressive number. Kind of like Apple’s cash store or …well, enough of comparisons. Both are impressive and congrats to both.
Here’s another impressive number: according to a recent article in The New York Times: 24% of California children live under the poverty line.
That is unacceptable. Who are we to live side by side with hungry children and let them be unseen? Do we really know hunger and fear? see my post: Between the Lotus and the Lambroghini on Palo Alto poverty. (Getting uncomfortable? I don’t want you to be. That’s not what this is about. )
… the Republican leadership’s bill to cut SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) by almost $40 billion over the next decade marks a new low for an already dysfunctional Congress. It would increase hunger and hardship all across our country.
By cutting food assistance for at least 3.8 million low-income people in the coming year — including some of the very poorest Americans, many children, senior citizens, and veterans — this cruel, if not heartless, legislation could jeopardize a vital stepping stone to many families who are still struggling to find work or who depend on low-wage jobs. As the nation slowly climbs out of the deepest recession in decades — with 22 million people still unemployed or underemployed — millions of families rely on SNAP to help feed their children.
SNAP recipients already are preparing for an across-the-board cut in their SNAP benefits beginning in November that will reduce their modest benefits to less than $1.40 per person per meal.
For decades, policymakers have shared a bipartisan commitment to reducing hunger and hardship. This legislation turns its back on that commitment.
What are we going to do? We who like to massage the data, disrupt the status quo and find new answers to old problems? How about 1073 million to celebrate the tree and feed the kids for a start?
El Palo Alto Tree is 1073 years old. Happy Every Day, wonderful tree.
“The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization and policy institute that conducts research and analysis on a range of government policies and programs. It is supported primarily by foundation grants.”
“LabCorp had more than $5.6 billion in revenue in 2012. ” This is a large number I just saw. Given this plus all the other signs, Theranos is going to be the hottest thing in the Valley next to the iWatch. And make no mistake – that iWatch is coming…soon. Where else will we find Theranos besides Walgreen’s and the military? How about college campuses? (But can’t LabCorps make the same product?) Who is going to want the iWatch? Everyone.
more on Theranos after Anne W.
It’s about time! Fast Company honors Founder and CEO of 23andme.com, Anne Wojcicki
Wojcicki is connected to the fabric of Silicon Valley, which has served her well. But her goals are global. “We’re not just looking to get a venture-capital return,” Wojcicki says. “We set out with this company to revolutionize health care.” On the same December day when she closed a $59 million round of financing, she dropped the price of 23andMe’s genetic testing from $299 to $99. While prices like that may not make taking control of one’s health a universal, democratic reality, they accelerate our society’s move in that direction. The end result could be a wholesale shift in the way we treat illness, a move away from our current diagnostic model to one based on prevention. That’s why, if Wojcicki gets it right, 23andMe could help change the health care industry as we know it. “At $99, we are opening the doors of access,” she says. “Genetics is part of an entire path for how you’re going to live a healthier life.”
I flipped this article on the cover of Silicon Valley and DNA is Me, two Flipboard magazines I curate. (download the Flipboard app – it’s worth it!)
Juxtaposing 23andme (and knowing full well that it is embedded in mainstream ways Anne probably never dreamed of to begin with), with Theranos shows us Theranos will be HUGE quickly but controlling. (Anyone into Facebook’s Palo Alto headquarters has to be)
Interesting to see that they have now probably responded to complaints from insurance companies and doctors because, OMG, using Theranos means a loss of income.
Blood draws are sources of income – and god forbid, we should let the doctors lose some to a disruptive technology. So, Theranos has redone its website and told the medical community not to worry – your income is safe. They say:
No new infrastructure needed.
You can draw samples in your office using your standard venipuncture draw method. Small specimens in your smallest collection containers are all we need.
You can also have your patients have samples drawn at any Theranos™ Wellness Center. They’re conveniently located and are available on a walk-in or appointment basis with a physician order, easily fitting into patients’ schedules and routines.
This will be interesting to see how it plays out when the patients realize the cost savings of going to Walgreens.
I see the website has also deleted the sentences I outlined in my earlier post and revised it to reflect those concerns as well as the concerns of the medical community.
But, still no tip of the hat to real power to the people so, to those who really want control of their health, you can order blood tests on your own here:
http://www.privatemdlabs.com/ (very expensive tests indeed, but zero out the cost of a doctor and the stress involved with that and ask yourself: What’s peace of mind worth?)
