Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

[VagueMag]

For something of its size and influence very few people have heard of SRI, but it comes up frequently in 'noided online discussions about the overlap between Silicon Valley and military/intelligence. A lot of the things that PARC was credited with creating in the first place were really dreamed up at SRI, so it makes a certain sense for them to be merging:

https://squamuglia.wordpress.com/2017/04/16/67/#more-67

https://squamuglia.wordpress.com/2017/04/22/yes-kids-cookie-...

[rchiang]

I think it's important to note that much (all?) of PARCs research has been oriented around the "office of the future". In the broadest sense of that vision, they had a huge hand in originating a lot of computing technologies.

And while SRI has had their impact in the computing industry, they also have other research labs that have very little to do with computing such as biomedical, education, and policy.

[DoingIsLearning]

Much of the Research leading up to the DaVinci Surgical Robot as is known today was in fact under SRI's umbrella, originally with the purpose of having battle field hospitals with remote surgery teleoperation.

Another great example of the overlap between Silicon Valley and military/intelligence. It's disconcerting how great tech for the masses is often spun out of a warfare motivation.

[technothrasher]

When I hear SRI, I always think of the parapsychology research they did for 20 or so years from ~1970-1990 and their huge clash with the newly founded skeptical organization CSICOP (now CSI) in the late 70's.

[lovecg]

Most people have heard of Siri though that was named after SRI!

[strangeloops85]

I think Xerox has been trying to unload PARC for a while, and this just seems like a way for them to do it and get a tax write-off since it's a 'donation'. PARC has already been doing a lot of government contract work, and I've seen teams from PARC and SRI compete for certain programs, so there's definitely synergy there. But I think PARC was historically more commercially oriented than SRI, so there will be some cultural differences internally.

Over time Xerox has gone quite far from where it was when PARC was founded and I think internal support for it had weakened a lot.

The bigger problem both orgs have historically had is on compensation and retaining talent. A lot of people tend to leave or get poached by major companies and their R&D units - lots of former PARC folks at X, and lots of former SRI folks across various robotics companies.

[rchiang]

Xerox went through the process of making PARC a wholly-owned subsidiary in 2002 (which is around the time the parc.com domain was created to replace the parc.xerox.com subdomain). This was presumably as part of trying to sell of PARC, in part or as a whole.

Xerox's revenue has been slowly declining over that time (~$15B from 2002-2009, ~$20B 2010-2013, ~$10B 2014-2019, ~$7B 2020-2023). There's likely a few business-related reasons they are doing this donation now.

[rbanffy]

> I think Xerox has been trying to unload PARC for a while

I wonder why some corporations don't see the value of R&D, or even "incidental" R&D, when you develop something revolutionary while you work on something profitable.

[eichin]

PARC and SRI in the news? what is this, 1993? am I going to see a DECWRL announcement next?

[1letterunixname]

My UUCP mail spool just caught up. I missed the sales at BEST and Service Merchandize, and dammit, I had coupons to redeem.

[retrocryptid]

HP could probably make some cash by reconstitution WRL and spinning it off.

[1letterunixname]

SRI was Stanford University affiliates' dodge around the school's charter to work to work on MIC projects such as work for DARPA. Not quite RAND but still not saints.

[osnium123]

Will this mean that PARC will transition towards doing more government funded research? SRI is pretty heavily funded by the government as far as I know.

[rchiang]

The Morningstar article had a few more details that I couldn't find anywhere else:

"As part of the donation, Xerox will enter into a preferred research agreement, called the Technology Exploration and Innovation Program, in which SRI will provide contracted research and development services to Xerox and its clients. Through the collaborative program, Xerox and SRI will identify topic areas relevant to Xerox’s core print, digital and IT Services business, with the final goal of creating proofs-of-concept and roadmaps to implementation. Xerox will also retain a branded Innovation Hub at PARC to host meetings, demonstrations and annual conferences for its clients."

It's unclear what the size of this revenue stream is compared to SRI's current revenues.

[gumby]

PARC has been doing government funded research from the beginning (ARPA); after they were semi-spun off from Xerox they were primarily funded the same as SRI: government grants and corporate contracting.

[usr1106]

As a software engineer since the 1980s, of course I know (Xerox) PARC. But am I the only one for whom SRI does not ring any bells? I'm confident Wikipedia can tell me more, but if they don't tell in their press release I would claim they might overestimate their "brand".

[gumby]

SRI is where Doug Engelbart worked developed the mouse and windowing interface (among other things) and put together the "Mother of all Demos".

SRI where the original ARPANET NIC was, and had various important roles in the development of the net.

I really don't think they overestimated their brand, they just talk to their likely customers.

(I worked at PARC, never at SRI, but I had many friends from SRI, and there was a flow of personnel in both directions).

[jldugger]

SRI is like, the secret bit of stanford where the faculty only do research and no teaching. It's where Siri and Nuance came from, and two staffers who worked there in the 50s quit to found FairIssac. Most notably for the HN crowd, its where Englebart worked on his Mother of All Demos, and where LaTeX was written.

[CaliforniaKarl]

SRI was one of the original nodes of the ARPAnet, and was one of the two nodes to first come online (the other was at UCLA).

SRI is also where the “Mother of all Demos” came from.

[fmajid]

Have you heard of Doug Engelbart and his Mother of All Demos? That was at SRI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos

[robbiet480]

SRI was instrumental in the creation of Disneyland https://www.sri.com/hoi/disneyland/

[jeron]

SRI is Stanford Research Institute, which was established by the trustees of Stanford University in 1946 [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRI_International

[drewda]

If you don't know the acronym SRI, then you probably aren't likely their target customer :)

The S used to stand for Stanford.

Just like RAND or Battelle or a half dozen others, it's nominally a non-profit organization that manages huge R&D projects, employs thousands of scientists and engineers, and manages government research facilities.

[ZanyProgrammer]

IIRC basically a Pentagon funded think tank in Silicon Valley, though their best days were really the 1970s and 1980s.

[tverbeure]

Ever heard of Siri?

It was an SRI spinout, acquired by Apple in 2010. https://www.sri.com/hoi/siri/

[carom]

I've teamed with SRI before. They're well known in the defense research space.

[dekhn]

Douglas Englebart (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos) worked there in the 60s. They were one of the very first sites on the Internet. Lots of highly technical research has been done there over the decades.

[MaysonL]

Back in the ‘700s I was blown away reading some of Doug Engelbart’s research reports hot off the CopyFlo®. See “The Mother of All Demos” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos

[jelliclesfarm]

SRI completely developed Abundant Robotics..the first apple harvester robot. It was the only one of its kind. But American VCs ..being who they are … do not consider real Ag worthy and let it die. Abundant Robotics went bankrupt and went into liquidation..the last I heard, their IPs sold to a small Chinese led incubator.

SRI has its fingers in a lot of pies..including surgical robotics.

[robert-graham]

Remember that SRI is a patent troll. They are non-practicing entity. They don't build the things they "invent". They instead write patents then extort the people who do build things.

I say this from personal experience. I created many inventions in "intrusion detection", spent years in data centers making theory work in practice. SRI sued me using vaguely worded patents.

It's a harsh accusation, but objectively true. They never built a commercial intrusion-detection product, but they did sue people.

[mlyle]

All academic and research institutes tend to accumulate patents and weaponize them. It's not fair to characterize SRI as a "non-practicing entity". Aside from all the things they build for defense / NSF, they did invent this thing called "Siri" that a lot of people use.

> They never built a commercial intrusion-detection product

No, but they did give away things like Bothunter away (which is admittedly HIDS).

I'm sympathetic to the argument against patents, etc. I was your competitor in the IDS space and also made a very fast IDS and exited, and also was harassed by people without a product in the market (over sending TCP RSTs to close connections, of all things, where there was loads of prior art).

[AlbertCory]

"patent troll" -- I hate those as much as you do, but I wouldn't call SRI one. All patents have the broadest language the lawyers could get through the PTO.

Wow, do the lawyers over on Reddit hate this! In the Appendix, you can follow the progress of a recent Facebook patent:

https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/lets-vote-on-it

I do tend to be inflammatory at times /s

[AlbertCory]

"non-practicing entity" usually means some company that's only formed to sue people, and has no other business. After it's collected the money, it goes out of business, so there are no assets to recover from them. Often their "office" is just a PO box in East Texas.

SRI is a real research entity. I know someone who worked there, and he's not a lawyer. That doesn't make them any more admirable, of course.

[kepler1]

Somehow, I see 2 empty campuses merging to sell off their real estate value that is currently worth more than any new intellectual property being produced.

[aoki]

The PARC campus is part of Stanford Research Park, so no.

[retrocryptid]

Yes. Because employees are clamoring to return to the office.

[musicale]

The whole is lesser than the sum of its parts.

[retrocryptid]

Oof. Unkind. Hopefully not accurate.