ARC vs PARC

When power was transfered from the university funded ARC to the corporately funded PARC, several goals changed. I am one to assume that these new goals would be less altruistic than before. However, despite PARC's corporate smear, several of their new goals shaped new media in a positive way ARC never could. Here I mainly refer to PARC's insistence on the user friendliness of new technologies. Were it not for this simple goal, the PC explosion probably would not have occurred as soon as it did, therefore affecting everything from human communication to the music business.

One thing I am still torn on, however, is PARC's need to separate users from creators. It has done this to maximize profit, but countless issues have arisen because of the software industry's fight against piracy. Though the free software movement is still underway, I wonder if we are better off today having privatized the creation of software, or if we would be better if all software were the creation of the computer society as a whole.