June 11, 1984

The Mac is the first computer good enough to be criticized. ... The IBM PC is beneath comment. It's been known for 12 years how to do a good-looking display and IBM didn't put one on its machine. You can't have any favorable comment beyond that. That is the ultimate in know-nothingness.

- Alan Kay (Apple Fellow) in an interview with InfoWorld, June 11, 1984.

June 1, 1971

Thirty-five years before the launch of Twitter, American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist Herbert Simon coins the term "Attention economy" in the essay "Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World" published in Computers, Communication, and the Public Interest by The Johns Hopkins Press on this day on June 1, 1971.

"In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it." (pp 40 - 41)

In his paper, Simon recognizes that many designers of information systems incorrectly represented their design problem as information scarcity rather than attention scarcity, and as a result they built systems that excell at providing more and more information to people, when what was really needed were systems that excelled at filtering out unimportant or irrelevant information.

May 17, 1986

"Happiness is the only thing life's about. You don't buy a computer unless you think it's a road to greater happiness. You don't do anything in life unless it's for happiness. That's the only way you can measure life, by the number of smiles per day. It's food, fun, and friends."

- Steve Wozniak in his valedictory address
University of California, Berkeley, May 17, 1986.

April 23, 1963

Memorandum For Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network

J. C. R. Licklider, the Director of Behavioral Sciences Command & Control Research at ARPA, distributes a memorandum that will often later cited as the origin of ARPAnet, the packet switching network that was the forerunner of the Internet, to his colleagues, "the members and affiliates of the intergalactic network." In the memo he outlines the challenges that would be presented in their efforts to establish a time-sharing network of computers with the software available.

March 26, 1984

Promising Macintosh Review

Considering all of the hoopla that has preceded the Mac's introduction, we are still greatly impressed with Apple's new product.  The Macintosh is a well-designed personal computer that, dollar for dollar, represents the most advanced personal computer to date.  The MC68000 processor, the 3.5-inch variable-speed disk drive, the high-resolution display, the advanced operating system and user interface as well as the rich use of graphics make this machine superior to the rest of the pack.  In our opinion, the success of the Macintosh will be determined by Apple's ability to provide or to encourage others to supply hardware expansions and exciting and usable software.  We think Apple has at least one thing right—the Macintosh is the one machine with the potential to challenge IBM's hold on the market.

- Thomas Neudecker
InfoWorld, March 26, 1984

March 25, 1932

One of the Most Mis-Quoted Movies in History is Released

MGM releases the black and white adventure film Tarzan the Ape Man,based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' popular novel Tarzan of the Apes on March 25, 1932. The film will give rise to a wildly popular franchise and the oft-quipped catch phrase "Me Tarzan, you Jane."

The phrase is never actually spoken in the film, though.  Nor is it ever used in the books. The quote is taken from an interview with the movie's lead star, Johnny Weissmuller, printed in the June 1932 issue of Photoplay Magazine.

In the interview, he jokingly tells a reporter I didn’t have to act in Tarzan, the Ape Man — just said, ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane.’” Shortly after the article hit newstands, the catchphrase entered the vernacular, often as part of comedy routines. The phrase quickly became associated with Weissmuller, and Weissmuller was intractably associated with the Tarzan films.  Thus, the misquote.

March 7, 2002

“Everybody should be in a business once in their lives that competes with Microsoft, just for the experience.”

-  Marc Andreessen (Netscape founder) in an interview with The Economist,
"The poster-child who grew up," March 7, 2002.