Who’s On Phirst

Phurnace Software makes its home at the MCC building, which is owned and managed by the Unversity of Texas at Austin . Quite a few really neat companies are located here, including Bigfoot Networks . But, there is no company in the building named MCC. So, what the heck does MCC stand for? Short answer: Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation

Wikipedia has a brief article on MCC . Here's a brief snippet:

"In late 1982, several major computer and semiconductor manufacturers in the United States banded together and founded MCC ... as an American answer to Japan's Fifth Generation Project, a large Japanese research project aimed at producing a new kind of computer by 1991."

Most of the projects they worked on involved Artifical Intelligence. A really cool project, InfoSleuth which was a very early web search engine. This focus on AI can still be seen, to some degree, at the University's CS department. Of course, the good times couldn't last forever. Mainframe companies began to get pushed aside by IT companies, but when the bubble popped, the members support for external R&D evaporated. MCC ended in 2000.

So, what happened to the Fifth Generation Project? Total and complete failure . They got their butts whipped by Sun and Intel processors. Cheap and fast beats expensive and fast. Always.

The reason I began thinking about this is because of the NY Post article yesterday about the Abu Dubai Investment Council purchasing the Chrysler Building. Of course, Drudge picked up on it and has had it in RED as the top link all of yesterday. Seeming to say that our most treasured symbols of America are being purchased by a foreigner. OH NOES!

Please. Sony bought Columbia Pictures. Matsushita bought Universal Studios. Mitsubishi bought Rockefeller Center. From my perspective, when a foreign investor starts investing in the US, they are typically 12 months from a fall . You read it here first, folks.

So, what is the difference between Sun and Intel versus MCC in the 1980s? Profit. Pure and simple. By allowing the companies that researched and developed x86 and RISC to directly profit, we have provided them a strong incentive to create jobs and wealth.
 
Thankfully, profit is a better motivator than hand-wringing, chicken-little jingoism.