The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, which most people refer to as Xerox PARC, is one of the most fabled institutions in Silicon Valley. PARC is also where Steve Jobs and early Apple engineers took inspiration for aspects of the Macintosh computer. Today, Xerox PARC remains an active operation with a host of commercial clients, focused in areas that include printed electronics, data and analytics, cleantech, and contextual intelligence. During the conversation, we talked about innovation, managing brilliant researchers, and the critical importance of user experience. One of the fascinating parts of our discussion was a window Steve provided into PARC's work on the Internet of Things.

For nearly 40 years, Ronald Kaplan has been working on better ways to talk with machines. A former researcher at Xerox PARC and Microsoft, he's now a consulting professor in computational linguistics at Stanford and a senior director at the Silicon Valley research division of Nuance Communications, a Massachusetts company that makes voice-enabled software for cars, smartphones, corporate call centers and medical transcription services. While its software has been used by Apple, Samsung, Ford and Subaru, among others, Nuance also competes with major tech firms, including Google and Microsoft, that are working on their own voice systems. We recently spoke with Kaplan at the Nuance offices in Sunnyvale; the following was edited for length and clarity. Q: Can you give me a high-level overview of where we are with voice technology?

An Apple Inc. Lisa II computer circa 1983 sits on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, U.S. Photographer: Noah Berger/Bloomberg This week's milestones in the history of technology include the public unveiling of the air defense system that led to networked and interactive computing, and the Apple Lisa and Apple Macintosh that led to the mainstreaming of the graphical user interface. The development of the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) is disclosed to the public. It collected and coordinated data from radar sites and processed it to produce a single unified image of the airspace over a wide area, directing the response of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to an air attack. SAGE's use of telephone lines to communicate from computer to computer and computer to radar laid the groundwork for modems. The control program, the largest real-time computer program written at that time, spawned a new profession, software engineering.

Amazon has hired Ashwin Ram, an ex-Xerox PARC employee and a researcher in cognitive science, in an effort to step up its AI R&D department. Although Amazon have not officially released a statement, Ram announced on Twitter that he was "excited to join Amazon." A spokesperson from Amazon has confirmed his appointment but refused to provide further comment. Ram is described as Alexa AI senior manager on his LinkedIn profile. Ram had served as the Chief Innovation Officer at Xerox PARC, a venerate Silicon Valley R&D powerhouse whose noted luminaries include the creators of Ethernet, the world's first WYSIWYG editor, the GUI, the mouse, and laser printing.

Amazon has hired Xerox PARC employee and artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Ashwin Ram to head up AI R&D for Alexa, the e-commerce behemoth's virtual assistant. Ram first tweeted about his appointment on Tuesday, and a spokesperson for Amazon has now confirmed the hire but declined to offer any further comment. The veteran computer science researcher worked at PARC for the last five years, most recently holding the role of Area Manager & Chief Innovation Officer, Interactive Intelligence & Augmented Social Cognition, according to LinkedIn, where he worked on apps and technology related to health and well-being. Excited to join @Amazon to lead AI r&d team for Alexa, the conversational agent that powers @AmazonEcho. Ram is also an adjunct professor for the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, where he ran the Cognitive Computing Lab for 8 years up until 2011. It was in that role that he led research in AI and cognitive science.

The (CSCW '86) was held in Austin, participants). The three-day report introduces the field of computersupported Texas, on 3-5 December 1986. It was event included nine paper sessions: cooperative work, describes the sponsored by the Microelectronics supporting face-to-face groups, empirical CSCW '86 program, and discusses the significance and Computer Technology Corporation studies, supporting distributed of the conference results An (MCC) Software Technology Program groups, hypertext systems, underlying introduction to the follow-on conference, in cooperation with the Association technology for collaborative systems, CSCW '88, is also provided for Computing Machinery (ACM) collaboration research, multimedia and its special interest groups on software and multiuser interfaces, industrial engineering (SIGSOFT), human experiences with CSCW, and coordination computer interaction (SIGCHI), and and decision making. There office information systems (SIGOIS); were also four panel sessions; the topics the Institute for Electrical and Electronic were collaboration and offices, collaborative Engineers (IEEE) Computer design studies, from theories Society; the American Association for to systems, and trends and markets Artificial Intelligence (AAAI); The for computer-supported group Information Management Society work. As the invited dinner speaker, (TIMS); and the Software Psychology Robert Howard, noted author on the Society.

Expert system projects are often based on collaboration with single domain expert. This leads to difficulties in judging the suitability of the chosen task and in acquiring the detailed knowledge required to carry out the task. This anecdotal article considers some of the advantages of using a diverse collection of domain experts.