
Lessons from the failure of General Magic - adrian_mrd
https://www.fastcompany.com/90208070/7-design-lessons-from-silicon-valleys-most-important-failure
======
chx
> and email addresses. All of these things were trying to make technology more
> accessible to people

Uh nope. Nothing like that happened. SNDMSG allowed sending messages between
users on the same computer. Then Ray Tomlinson added his file transfer code to
SNDMSG and needed a symbol to separate user names from the host names, and he
picked the @ Nowhere in there did anyone invent anything to make email
addresses more accessible to people.

The only reason there were host names and not just numbers on the right hand
side was because ARPAnet really has grown and just a few months before
Tomlinson's invention names were added
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc226](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc226) (20
hosts! really, big network) but this, again, predates email addresses.

Another very early example of email in 1970 was integrated into the NLS (short
for Online System) at the SRI ARC
[https://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/papers/scanned-
original/1...](https://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/papers/scanned-
original/1986-augment-101931-Workstation-History-and-the-Augmented-Knowledge-
Workshop.pdf) but this used usernames and not addresses "mail distribution was
addressed by peoples Idents with no need to know or specify which host they
used".

~~~
jibal
"Nowhere in there did anyone invent anything to make email addresses more
accessible to people."

That's not what it says ... it says trying to make _technology_ more
accessible to people. user@hostname email addresses, as opposed to the old
UUCP bang paths, does indeed make technology more available to people. (FWIW,
I worked on the ARPANET at UCLA and was there when the IMP arrived in 1969, so
I do know a little something about this topic.)

~~~
chx
Perhaps what the article tried to say then it's the Domain Naming System which
tried to make technology more accessible to people.

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fmajid
I worked for France Télécom on their General Magic project, circa 1996. My job
was to work on the payment and e-commerce aspects of the platform, and I came
to the conclusion it was bound to fail because it lacked any provisions for
transactional integrity, and asked to be transferred to another project.

The Magic Cap UI, while cute, was hampered by the limitations of hardware back
then, but the backend was the real killer. Their distributed-agent technology
was half-baked, and despite AT&T Bell Labs's heroic efforts to make it work
(including building an entire language, High Telescript, to make it usable),
it failed anyway.

------
CalChris
The article misses General Magic's most successful alum, Pierre Omidyar, who
founded EBay while working at GM.

~~~
chaostheory
Unless I missed it, they may have forgotten Andy Rubin as well. It's
interesting how both Android and iPhone has connections to General Magic.

~~~
contingencies
It wouldn't surprise me if there is a tendency for an inner gestation period
whereby fundamental ideas prosper from exposure to additional experience
before maturing. Perhaps largely subconsciously.

------
aphextron
Where do people still care about pushing the boundary, exploring new
paradigms, and building shit? I'm so sick of hearing about this mythical
"silicon valley of yore" where there was community, and fellowship, and a
desire to improve humanity. I came here looking for that and all I see is
rent-seeking mega corps bent on scaling their surveillance platforms. Is that
dream still alive somewhere?

~~~
ukulele
I work out of my garage in Sunnyvale, building a platform trying to make the
web better. I eat lunch regularly with friends who do similar things, and I've
been a part of several companies (via VC work) that have desired to improve
humanity and are doing it.

There are people out there doing what you've described, but it doesn't (and
never did) get headlines because most headlines are paid for.

~~~
jxub
Could you expand on the platform part please? I'm sure many people here would
be interested and exposure on HN is free, so why not? ;)

~~~
ukulele
Yes I can do that -- it's a platform for building software modules that can be
added to any website or web app. Right now it does most of the popular build
steps automatically (Babel, SCSS, Handlebars) so developers can just focus on
actual code.

We have an open source library of ready-to-use modules that can be
forked/tweaked or used as is.

It's called Anymod [https://anymod.com](https://anymod.com). Hoping we can
become something useful for developers.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
Your "how it works"[1] page makes it look a little like a cross between
Codepen and Google Tag Manager. Is that a fair characterization of what Mods
do? I like the 'shared library' idea, that's something GTM makes actively
harder.

1: [https://anymod.com/how-it-works](https://anymod.com/how-it-works)

~~~
ukulele
The editor is similar to CodePen, with the biggest difference being you can
easily add what you've built to any website. I haven't ever used GTM but I
think the "make changes without re-deploying" approach is conceptually
similar.

------
adrian_mrd
My favourite quote from the piece: “If you have a bunch of self-motivated and
smart people and you put them together they’ll produce something incredible.
But you can’t minimize the importance of management.

It’s a dirty word. It’s prosaic. It’s not vision. It’s not dream. It’s not
technological excellence. But unfortunately, it makes all the difference.” -
Joanna Hoffman, Head of marketing at General Magic

Good management in technology environments is akin to tracks for a
train/monorail.

Boring: yes, but they provide the 'connective tissue', the velocity and the
direction for everyone in the organisation to leverage, the support
infrastructure for everyone else to produce great 'stuff' (products, services,
outcomes, whatever). They should also build upon years of experience and/or
brilliant thinking - which is what tracks do!

Great tech management teams also help (all) staff understand why the tracks
are there to begin with: to solve problems for users (relevant to the Andy
Hertzfeld 'put the user first' and the Tony Fadell 'understand your audience'
quotes).

And yeah, reframing rejections and criticisms (the Marc Porat quote) is great
advise for any entrepreneur.

------
devel0per_1
I like embrace criticism part. It's so real. Sometimes while making a screen's
layout I don't recognize bad decisions my colleagues see with first sight.
It's amazing lol

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
That's why teamwork is so important in every step of the development process,
every step needs a review. If someone is such a rockstar they don't to have
their items reviewed, all the review will do is show their rockstarness to
someone else.

~~~
maxxxxx
Just make sure the reviewers are very good. I see a lot of team reviews by
mediocre people that kill any kind of creativity.

------
Upvoter33
Hagiography, meet Silicon Valley. "Would Android exist without General Magic?
Absolutely not!" An overstatement which perfectly summarizes this film.

------
ecolonsmak
I'm planning a road bike tour of old silicon valley offices for next saturday,
does anybody know where in Mountain View the offices of General Magic were
located?

~~~
gdubs
Looks like Mary Avenue in Sunnyvale. Just keep your wits about you — Sunnyvale
isn’t the greatest town for biking.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.a...](https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=124408)

~~~
ecolonsmak
Thanks!

~~~
gdubs
No prob. Not sure the safest way to get there, but I'd probably start by
taking Stevens Creek Bike Trail to Evelyn ave and then maybe heading up Mary
(which is a pretty busy street, so maybe there's a better way.) Strava might
be a good app to check.

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Reimersholme
Wow, this title would make a perfect fantasy book title.

