Picture the three founders, all former Apple employees, two of whom – software engineers Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson – were already Silicon Valley legends for their work creating the Apple Macintosh. Atkinson’s prolific inventions included the double-click and the drop-down menu. The third founder, Mark Porat, had the gift of seeing the future.
In his 1976 Stanford doctoral thesis, Porat analyzed (in painstaking detail) a century of transformation in the American workforce and predicted a radical change in work. An economy based primarily on the transformation of matter and energy – through agriculture and industry – was giving way to an economy based on the transformation of information. He saw that computers and communications were reshaping every industry. “We are entering another phase in economic history,” Porat wrote. On the first page of the first chapter of his thesis, Porat coined a term that would become famous: “information economy.”
Borat followed this up by hosting a primetime documentary on PBS, Information societyin 1980. In it, he positioned information technology as disruptive on a scale matched only by the plow and the steam engine. He delved into the power of new technology, as well as emerging problems of privacy, information overload, misinformation, and rising inequality, and showed that most Americans had no idea that the ground was moving beneath them.
In 1988, Porat joined Apple’s Advanced Technology group, where he was able to apply his incredible insight to the team’s mission of figuring out the next big thing after personal computers. One day, Borat took the Sharp Wizard – a new electronic organizer with a calendar and phone book – and hooked it up to a Motorola analog cell phone. He had his concept. He soon began making plaster models of a range of phones and digital assistants. In 1989, he sketched in a big red notebook a fictional product that fit the future he predicted with uncanny accuracy. He called it “Pocket Crystal”. You don’t need to have seen the drawing before to become instantly familiar.
The layout of the Pocket Crystal depicts a thin glass rectangle with no prominent buttons – just a touchscreen. It will be a computer that combines a telephone and a fax machine; You can use it to send text messages, watch movies, play video games, buy plane tickets, and download new apps. It will fit in your pocket, and it will be beautiful. After the drawing, Porat wrote in his Red Book: “It must offer the kind of personal satisfaction that a fine piece of jewelry brings. It will have a felt value even when it is not being used. It must provide the comfort of a touchstone, the tangible satisfaction of a seashell, the magic of a crystal.”
In 1989 only Even 15% of American households had a computer, which didn’t fit into anyone’s pocket. Zero percent were browsing the web, because it wasn’t there. However, there was Mark Porat, who mainly drew iPhones.
The project was greenlit, but with a caveat: It was too big, even for Apple.
Early adopters were just talking on their brick-like cell phones. The Pocket Crystal will require not only unprecedented hardware and software, but networks that can connect the world and new digital communications standards.
In 1990, Borat and Apple CEO John Sculley agreed that Apple would invest and take a seat on the board, but the venture would spin off as a separate company and begin courting partners. For this new venture, the founders chose a name that evokes the country’s most respected companies and the famous saying of science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke stated that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And thus General Magic was born.
Scully introduced the founding trio of Sony. They pitched their idea, and within days Sony was on board, with a stake and a licensing deal. Then came Motorola, then ATandT. In quick succession, telecom giants and consumer electronics giants were convinced to join what became known as “the alliance.” Philips was next, and then Sony’s arch-rival Panasonic (then known as Matsushita). Then NTT (Japan’s largest telecommunications company), then Toshiba, then France Telecom, etc., each investing millions of dollars. General Magic’s partners controlled so much of the world’s telecommunications industry that alliance meetings had to begin with antitrust lawyers listing all the topics they were prohibited from discussing. It was, in the words of General Magic’s general counsel, the largest consortium of global companies that had ever existed in American business.
