PARC

After working at Xerox for ten years I finally got a chance to visit our Palo Alto Research Center. This the same PARC that's famous for developing the GUI, Ethernet, the Laser Printer and other huge innovations. I was with a customer and had the chance to hear about some of the latest innovations, including Transient Documents, a reusable paper where the content disappears over time and can be re-printed multiple times. PARC has recently been spun off as an independent self-sustaining research entity, but it still does a lot of work for Xerox and still has brilliant researchers focusing on document technologies and their adoption. It was interesting to hear from one of their anthropologists today in terms of how they deal wiith the cultural shifts to get people to use new technologies.