Franklin 2.0 - Steve Jobs - "He just worked" ... but wait there's more... much, much more

I thought I was going to wrap this paean to Jobs up last week.  But ironically my subject's demise, has infused these postings with a life of its own.  Several more posts and I'll find myself in competition with the biographer Walter Isaacson, who just published the authorized biography of Stephen Jobs.  Isaacson is the same author who coincidentally wrote a recent biography on Benjamin Franklin.  I trust his proximity to the object of his study will allow for greater insight and originality than his analysis from a distance of 200 years.  I do however admire his choice of subjects.  BTW, for a good read on Ben I would suggest either H.W. Brand's "The First American, The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin" or one of my sentimental favorites, "The Man Who Dared the Lighting", by the renowned and venerable, Thomas Fleming. Now where were we?  ...
 

 In my last post I had Steven Jobs wandering Silicon Valley pursuing his daunting vision of creating an universal operating system, installed on an aesthetically designed personal computer, engineered to a fare-thee-well.  

Meanwhile in another valley, an international collection of scientists and engineers were serendipitously converging in the Rhone Alps Valley near Geneva, Switzerland for a scheme no less ambitious  Their plan was to was design and construct the world's largest particle accelerator.  This would allow them the opportunity of slamming protons together at the speed of light, or as close as Einstein would allow, in hopes of discovering the secrets of the universe.

 

How often have you had 

quantum physics explained in a rap video?

In addition to lifting the skirt on the origins of the universe, one of the "theoretical" possibilities of a proton collision at light speed, would be the creation of a Black Hole that would devour most of the Swiss banks and everything else surrounding the Hadron Accelerator, faster than a bad credit default swap.  It should be noted, that possibility still has not been entirely ruled out.  But no risk - no reward.  Eventually the billions being invested to discover if God played dice with the universe, would pay an unexpected dividend that would bring Steve Jobs much closer to finding his own holy grail.

One of the first challenges the European Organization for Nuclear Research or CERN (I have no idea how they got the acronym CERN out that name.) was to create an efficient system of communications between the hundreds of research centers worldwide involved in the project.  At that time computer-to-computer communications was largely restricted to text. What they needed was system that would allow a method of moving massive amounts of engineering schematics and mathematics notations quickly and efficiently.

A Brit Tim Berners-Lee, out of MIT was working on a hypertext program that held promise.  He and his colleagues at CERN came up with a little program they humbly called, the " World Wide Web". 

Here's a link to the world's very first link: 




 I used the word serendipitously earlier because the computer that the World Wide Web was invented on was a Jobs' NeXT Computer.  The NeXT computer was part of Steven Jobs' vision to create the ultimate personal computing experience.   NeXT developed an elegant operating system that allowed blistering fast processing.

 

This NeXT Computer used by British scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee at CERN 

became the first Web server.

   

  Jobs agonized over the design, reportedly spending a $100,000 to design what ultimately looked like a black pizza box. (God only knows what he paid the designer who came up with the idea of capitalizing the X and T in NeXT.)  

By every measure but one, the NeXT computer was years ahead of anything else on the drawing boards.  Unfortunately, the one thing it was not ahead of was price.  Jobs' embraced Moore's law but the part he chose to ignore was, that while chips would get exponentially faster, they also would become cheaper by half.  As a result most competing PC's were about $1,200.  Jobs's NeXT computer was being delivered for about $12,000 a pop.   This doomed it from ever becoming personal.  It did however become popular with users, mostly programmers, who needed a programming computer that sizzled.  So while it never became commercially viable, NeXT played a peripheral part in the creation of the World Wide Web.  ( It should also be noted that DOOM, the first - first person shooter computer game. was also created on a NeXT).  With the development of hypertext and the World Wide Web, the next trick was how to navigate through the mind numbing addresses each link involved.  That rabbit came out of a hat, that was the result of another collision between technology and politics.  


I always thought that Al Gore's claim to inventing the Internet was the result of an unchecked ego or a possible campaign smear, dealers choice.

He didn't invent it - he just  wrote the check for it.
( Actually U.S. taxpayers paid)

Turns out there was a kernel of truth to the claim.  In 1986 Gore introduced and passed, the Super Computer Network Study Act.  This in turn provided the funding for the University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing Applications.  In 1991 one of the applications they came up with was "Mosiac".  The first graphical user interface web browser.

 

Note the Apple graphic design - It ain't Windows- Smells like Next or Mac

This went on to begat Netscape, which begat, Explorer , which begat Safari, which begat... well you get the idea.  This was the mother of all browsers and allowed the internet to be used by anyone who could point and click a mouse.  Thanks to Jobs that was everyone.

At this point I'd like to take a side trip back to 1992, and try and put Mosaic in perspective. You may recall the epiphany I recounted in a previous post about my encounter with the first Kodak computerized negative film scanner.  That revelation pales in comparison to Mosaic.  

I was working on a marketing program for Bell Atlantic, promoting their ISDN lines.  These are the data lines that Bell provided the banks to run their wire transfers and ATM machines.  It also allowed for the first practical commercial links for PC data transfers.  At the time Bell Atlantic was trying to get into the video distribution business and they saw ISDN as a way to move video around.   Their marketing director took me to the AT&T Research Center in New Jersey to have a look at something that might influence our spin on the future of ISDN.  When we arrived we were rushed into one of those rooms you see in phone commercials that show dozens of monitors small and large, running a network.  This room, unlike the ones in Hollywood, actually worked.  Several of the R&D guys took us over to a large monitor and excitedly asked us if we were ready to see something utterly amazing.  With the push of a view buttons this is what we saw...

 Contrary to popular opinion, one of the first uses of video on the internet was not porn, it was a cheesy B&W cam aimed at the coffee pot down the hall at Cambridge University so they could send a graduate assistant down when it was empty.

The marketing director and I looked at one another dumbfounded and asked, "That's it?  That's what you guys think is the future of ISDN?"  The Lab engineer gave us that patented look of - "You guys are idiots." which IT guys have subsequently taken to high art and explained, "No, you don't understand, that's a live video feed of a coffee pot in England."  As soon as we heard "live", we took another look and both said "Wow!" simultaneously. The boys then went on to give us a tour of about 8 video cams that were hooked up around the world.  I slowly began to realize what I was witnessing, as I watched dawn break live over Hawaii from a mountain top observatory.  

This changed  everything.  The marketing manager and I requested a meeting with his boss, the BA Chairman and his executive committee as soon as possible.  Not long after I listened as the Chairman shook his head and much like the executives at Kodak and Xerox who had shaken their heads before, said  "Let's not get ahead of ourselves.  We need to give this Internet thing some time to mature, see where it goes.  In the meantime, let's get back to selling what we have."   

I wonder what Steve Jobs would have said if he was in that room.  I only wish he had been, I had a lot BA stock then.  I only repeat this, to point out that back then, even the best minds that were paid to see the future, didn't.  Looking back,  my take away on it is: That often, "The future can only seen by those who are young enough to take advantage of it."

More to come...