Alan Kay posits that yes it does matter that PARC "invented the future" because there were and are very few researchers working with the opportunity mix necessary. They had five years of freedom from business concerns, tons of ambition, the right context, intelligence and inspiration. Kay claims that the extremely unique situation and persons at PARC and previously at ARPA are what gave rise to the inventions. I think he would agree with you that other people would have made similar discoveries and inventions, if only they too had the opportunity and necessary materials. From what I have heard Alan say in his speeches his perspective is that the opportunity simply does not exist today, at least not in the necessary configuration to do what PARC did.

Check out this video for a more detailed history recounted by Kay about PARC and what led up to it: http://vimeo.com/84523828

University research is not free from business concerns either---the phrase "publish or perish" exists for a reason.

You could apply this to everything in life and conclude that nothing matters. What is important is that Xerox PARC did invent many of the technologies we take for granted today. This should be celebrated along with all the other contributions that led us to the present.

>You could apply this to everything in life and conclude that nothing matters.

it matters "locally" - to individuals who invent and innovate and to ones who gets direct financial profit from it. The rest of civilization will get it anyway, at the time when civilization is ready to consume it, so details don't matter at that scale. Ancient Greeks could in theory build a steam engine [granted very low efficient] - they wouldn't have been able to put it use anyway, it would be just a curiosity like Aeolipile was.

It matters more than locally: those invention seeded the minds of the next generations, showed them what could be possible. It's not as if Gates and Jobs didn't hear about the work done at PARC. They most likely did and it "seeded" their minds or at least primed them for their ideas. Even if they didn't do even this, they at least confirmed them that their intuitions were on the right path, and without these confirmations they maybe wouldn't have even had the courage to start their businesses.

And if the ancient Greeks would have actually built that steam engine into a useful device (even something like a powered fishing lines drawer of anything of even the slightest usefulness), I'm sure this would've completely changed the course of human history, even if they may not have found too much practical use for it. You see, once you physically build something that works and is useful (or actually implement something that can be used, in the case of software), no matter how inefficient and barely-useful it is, you actually seed and idea into the minds of all the people that see that device working or hear about it working. And that idea takes roots and very soon they will think about improving it and finding uses for it. If you just write about it in a book, even if you add building instructions and careful calculations showing that it's possible, you get at most 1% of that mind-seeding power. Most peoples minds get primed to work on improving something only after seeing something that (at least kind of) works. It's the "if we'd only tweak that and that it might just actually really work" thinking that most people can only have after seeing something physical that at least "barely kind of works". Very few people have the intelligence and imagination to get a theoretical idea and turn it into something that works, but there always some Gates or Jobs or Wozniaks that once you give them a piece of practical vision they can carry it on to something that really works.

I think that if the ancient Greeks would have build a steam engine with even the most remote practical use and would've displayed that "craftmanship" to the people instead of keeping it locked in library, the whole middle ages with all their horrors might not even have existed. Humanity might have even jumped from antiquity to industrial age directly. Maybe with a slow languish at first, before something equivalent to the printing press would have been invented to help the dissemination of knowledge, but then faster and faster.

It's probably hard to tell in most specific cases, but it can be argued that some inventions were just ready to happen (e.g. the telephone and it's race to the patent office) while others may have taken decades longer if the right genius hadn't been in the right place at the right time (Einstein's relativity perhaps?)

I know that it is helpful at times to realize that invention and innovation could happen in a myriad of ways, but I don't think that is a fair way of looking at things in this case, or in many cases.

Without the invention of the mouse, we might all still be using trackballs. A mouse to me is not an "A ha!" invention. I remember when I first used one that it seemed silly to move a trackball around upside-down like that.

And without laser printing, we might all still be using ribbon cartridges at work, because of time/cost concerns with inkjet.

Everything that happens can have profound effects on the future. Think of the Challenger and Columbia disasters. While it's true that the American public had somewhat lost interest in the shuttle program prior to the Challenger disaster, they didn't think of it as risky or dangerous. Think of the lives that would have been saved and how much farther along we might be in space exploration had greater precaution been taken.

>Without the invention of the mouse, we might all still be using trackballs. A mouse to me is not an "A ha!" invention.

A ha! was to me when i first time used trackball instead of mouse. It was so great, such fast and precise movements (don't remember the game though :) And if i remember correctly people with carpal tunnel get trackball instead of mouse.

>Everything that happens can have profound effects on the future. Think of the Challenger and Columbia disasters. While it's true that the American public had somewhat lost interest in the shuttle program prior to the Challenger disaster, they didn't think of it as risky or dangerous. Think of the lives that would have been saved and how much farther along we might be in space exploration had greater precaution been taken.

i come from different school of thought. Whatever number of butterflies somebody squash today, it may (and will) affect only small details of the future while the whole system's trajectory will still be in the same volume of phase space as it determined by the macro conditions (like energy constraints, etc...).

>farther along we might be in space exploration had greater precaution been taken

the technological civilizations follow typical path. A bit faster, a bit slower doesn't matter. What matters is whether given technological civilization hits a bifurcation point like all-out nuclear war or uncontrollable climate change or uncontrollable run-away genetic development or implosion into ant-colony state as result of members being "always connected" ...