Why on the earth all the "business" people is so stupid ?
Alan Kay scanned the room, noted some of the the greatest minds and contributors of early personal computers, took one look at Steve Jobs and assessed he wasn't the smartest person in the room because he was a business person.
It had nothing to do with his youth, lack of accomplishments, insight, ability to articulate himself at that age, etc. etc. etc. It also had nothing to do with the caliber of people they were hiring at Xerox, many who came from SRI and who had helped realize Doug Engelbart's vision.
It all came down to business people vs. tech.
I can as easily see them being constructive usability criticisms: details that the engineers steeped in developing it missed, but concrete things that would stop actual customer adoption.
That really is interesting. I am surprised Michael Hiltzik never asked about it during the research for Dealers of Lightning. Given its length that book probably tries to cover too much ground, but it's interesting that they never had that conversation. (IIRC the author quotes Adele Goldberg in that chapter)
