The Microsoft Provocateur (1997) (newyorker.com)

of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Ventures fame.

A person of disreputable morality indeed.

i find it a bit laughable / disappointing that they don't even refer to Alan Kay by name-- "a former Apple programmer"-- as though somehow Myhrvold is more important to ... anything ... than Alan Kay has been to computing. The only reason Microsoft even exists is because they ripped off Alan Kay and his colleagues at Xerox PARC (well, arguably Apple too, but bill gates himself thought of it more as "stealing the rich neighbor's tv set [before Apple did]").

does anyone else get a weird sense of cognitive dissonance when reading stuff about Nathan Mhyrvold? by all accounts he seems like an extremely capable and insightful person, but at the same time i find his mercenary tactics (see: Microsoft, Intellectual Ventures) extremely discomfiting-- like he is some sort of sith lord not to be trusted or something.

> Myhrvold then turned to what he called “the truly personal computer—something which has the size and weight appropriate to be carried with you at all times.” This wireless “digital wallet,” as he called it, would allow anyone to communicate, untethered to a wire, by voice, video, fax, E-mail, or pager. The device would be a clock, an alarm, a schedule manager, a notepad, an archive of phone numbers and records, and a library of music and books. The digital signature produced by this wallet would have a personal I.D. for security, and could replace cash, credit cards, checks, and keys. He believed that the obstacles were economic and human, not technological. “The cost will not be very high—it is pretty easy to imagine a total cost of manufacture in the range of $100 to $250 on introduction, which means $400 to $1000 retail price,” he wrote.

Well, it probably took a bit longer than expected, but that pretty much describes the smartphone and where it's headed.