Chief toy maker
By Margie Wylie
Staff Writer, CNET NEWS.COM

There's something eerily familiar about Mark Weiser. At 44, the twinkly-eyed, elfin researcher smiles calmly as he explains how computers will soon surround, cushion, and, if we're not careful, watch us.

The chief technologist at Xerox PARC, Weiser brings to mind another chief toy maker, the elf honcho who lives on the North Pole. From floor to ceiling, his office is stacked with gadgets and goodies in the works, from bare circuit boards and video cameras to a talking teddy bear and palm-sized computers. Like good ole St. Nick, whose bounty comes only because he "knows when you've been bad or good," there's something a little sinister about this toy maker's job, and he knows it.

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Ten years ago, Weiser saved from extinction PARC's computer lab--best known for inventing, then giving away, the essential ingredients of today's computing--with the idea of "ubiquitous computing." Since then, Weiser has been working to solve the problems that we'll encounter when all the computers around us learn, as he puts it, to use us better.

PARC, and Weiser for that matter, are cultural refugees in Silicon Valley. In an age when corporate myopia has induced companies to hack research in the name of short-term profits, PARC still employs philosophers and artists and values teamwork above individual stars. Perhaps most odd is that its chief technologist, while inventing the means of ubiquitous computing, is allowed to warn us of his creation's ethical muddles.

Still, Weiser is hardly a computer-smashing Luddite. In fact, he probably thinks he's the luckiest nerd alive. In his spare time, he's the drummer for Severe Tire Damage, a band that has been mentioned in the movie Mrs. Doubtfire and the comic-strip Doonesbury. (The band also plays live on MBone streaming video to Internet audiences each week and has won the dubious distinction of being called "The worst rock and roll band to ever play on the Internet.") So, he knows the allure and the pure fun in technology. Maybe that's what shapes his optimism. He warns that any technology can be turned to bad ends once it's loosed on the world, but, in the end, he has hope that we won't all get a lump of technological coal in our virtual stockings. That, however, is up to us.

NEWS.COM met Weiser in his Palo Alto, California, office and discussed PARC's unique mission, the next wave of computing, and its impact on society.

NEWS.COM: You mentioned there was something completely different between the way Bell Labs runs and Xerox PARC runs.
Weiser: PARC is different from almost every other place in the world, both universities and other research labs. I've been a professor and I've been at other research places. At PARC, there's wonderful collaboration. We have here philosophers, we have anthropologists, we have psychologists, we have computer scientists, we have physicists, and we have electrical engineers. We also have a lot of respect for one another. We work on a lot of things together. Or, at least we bump into each other in the cafeteria and are willing to talk, unlike any university where there's more diversity but no one talks to each other. Even in the same department, two professors won't talk to each other even if they're both in computer science.

So we have a much more collaborative, cooperative environment. We discourage single-person projects. That's sort of the opposite of Bell Labs, where they encourage the one-person project; each person is supposed to be an ivory tower if you're at Bell Labs. We have some great people here, but part of what makes them great is they are great collaborators. That's a very important value for us.

NEXT: Life at PARC