How PARC Imagined the Future: “Futures Day” 40 Years Later and the Legacy of PARC

Forty years ago this month, Xerox hosted a multi-million dollar event to show its senior executives how PARC imagined the future. One of the people in charge of this “Futures Day” was then PARC Computer Science Lab member, Chuck Geschke, who would go on to co-found Adobe Systems with fellow PARC alum John Warnock. Join Chuck Geschke and Stanford historian Leslie Berlin, author of the new book Troublemakers: Silicon Valley’s Coming of Age, in conversation about Futures Day and the history of Silicon Valley. Additionally, Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Alphabet and former CEO of Google, will join Geschke and Berlin to discuss the legacy of PARC.

Presenter(s)

Leslie Berlin is Project Historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford, where she also received her PhD. Leslie is the author of two books, Troublemakers: Silicon Valley’s Coming of Age and The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley. She has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences and served on the advisory committee to the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian. She was a “Prototype” columnist for The New York Times and has commented on Silicon Valley for the Wall Street Journal, NPR, PBS, the BBC, The Atlantic and Wired.

Chuck Geschke is co-founder and former chairman of the board of Adobe Systems. A respected industry leader, Geschke was instrumental in developing some of the software industry’s most pioneering technologies. Prior to co-founding Adobe, Geschke formed the Imaging Sciences Laboratory at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and was a principal scientist and researcher at PARC’s Computer Science Laboratory. Geschke, along with Adobe co-founder and fellow PARC alum John Warnock, was the recipient of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, one of the nation’s highest honors bestowed on scientists, engineers and inventors.

Eric Schmidt is Executive Chairman of Alphabet, Inc. and was CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011. Prior to joining Google, Schmidt served as CEO of Novell and CTO of Sun Microsystems. He also served on the research staff of Xerox PARC’s Computer Science Laboratory in the early-1980s. Schmidt chaired the Department of Defense’s Innovation Advisory Board in 2016 and has served on the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and the Prime Minister’s Advisory Council in the United Kingdom. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2006 and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as a fellow in 2007. In 2017 he received the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service.