Jim Clark, the Stanford University computer scientist who founded SGI, along with Netscape and several other web companies, talks to Silicon Valley’s MercuryNews about some of what he remembers about the early days of SGI and his endeavors.
Q How would you assess your record as a “visionary” in tech?
A The vision of Silicon Graphics was certainly mine. I taught the seven other founders computer graphics. The so-called Graphics Library, which now (as the OpenGL) is in practically every computing product on the planet, was the outgrowth of my teaching computer graphics for almost 10 years.
In particular, I absolutely love this exchange:
Having spent a lot of time thinking about networking at SGI, when I realized what the Web would become, I was all in (with Netscape). People thought I was nuts until we generated $70 million of revenue in year one, and $300 million in year two. Microsoft killed the company, but at least AOL bought us before we expired. Ironically, if Microsoft had focused on how to leverage it, rather than how to kill it, they might be in Google’s position today. Serves them right.
Update:Sorry, the previous link would redirect to a “Purchase a Subscription” page and caused all kinds of weirdness. Fixed now.
via Tech visionary Jim Clark speaks his mind – San Jose Mercury News.
