The Triumph of the Nerds: Part III, "Great Artists Steal"
1.) The film opens with a set of assertions about the relationship between technological innovation and commercial success. Do you agree with Cringley'ßs view? How does your answer shape your understanding of the history of Silicon Valley?
2.) This film adds detail to the story of Xerox PARC's "fumbling of the future." Why didn't Xerox commercially exploit the technology developed at their Palo Alto research lab? What considerations led them to their decision? What comparisons do you see between the Xerox story and the stories of other big technology companies you have encountered? Generalizing from the Xerox story and from others like it what lessons do you draw about the commercial application of innovative technology?
3.) What role did Steve Jobs play in the development of the Macintosh? Is it accurate to call it "his machine?" Why or why not?
4.) How did Microsoft get involved in the Macintosh project? In what ways was their participation in the Macintosh project representative of their position in the PC industry as a whole? Did Microsoft unfairly or unethically exploit their relationship with Apple and the Macintosh project? If so, when, where, and how? What role should ethics play in situations such as these?
5.) Why were the first Macs commercially unsuccessful? Why, by contrast, was the Microsoft Windows operating system a huge commercial success from the start? What business decisions did each company make in contributing to these two different outcomes? Could the two histories have been different? If so, how? What do these contrasting stories teach us about the relationship between technological innovation and commercial success?
6.) The story of Steve Jobs and John Sculley at Apple illustrates a classic Silicon Valley tension: the struggle between the technologists and the corporate capitalists. A similar clash, you might remember, characterized the Seymour Cray/Bill Norris relationship at Control Data Corporation and the Buckminster Fuller/Beach Aircraft relationship in the production of the Dymaxion House as well as others we have encountered. What lessons do you draw from these and other similar stories about the relationship between technological innovation and capitalism? How does one relate to the other? Is capitalism a catalyst of technological innovation or its enemy? In what ways does capitalism depend upon technological innovation? In what ways does it seek to retard it?
7.) The film ends with Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer reflecting
on the relative merits of the Macintosh versus the Windows PC? With which
one do your sympathies lie? What in your opinion is the ultimate significance
of the triumph of Microsoft and the eclipse of Apple in the PC industry?
In what ways has this development hurt Silicon Valley and in what ways
has it helped it? Has the development of the PC industry from its inception
in 1976 to its dominance by the "Wintel dupoly" (i.e. PCs with Intel processors
and Windows operating system) in the early 1990s changed the character
of Silicon Valley? If so, how exactly?