 So my career in computer science was launched one day when I'm sitting in the fraternity and a friend of mine a guy named George Ernst, he's older, a couple of years older than me came in and he said he said I'm taking this course from this crazy professor strange-looking guy But he said if you want to get an A in in my class Just write it on the blue book and the final exam and I'll give you that grade He said whatever grade you want. Just write it on the blue book. So I said that that sounds interesting Said what is that class for taking and it was a class in computer programming being taught by the world famous Alan Perlis I used to say well back in those days. It was like Building a log cabin with an axe you had an axe and a bunch of trees And it was up to you to figure out the architecture of the log cabin and all the techniques of building and just had to Do it so it was that was great fun and adventures even though it was extremely inefficient Nowadays you can get anything any program that you feel like writing you don't need to write You just need to find it on github and you can write it But then getting the damn thing to work still is a lot of a hassle, but now it's it's it's a big pain so anyway, but I found that so I just found that that world of programming was easy and I guess to say Perlis and the other professors were so enthusiastic about Computing that that it just drew me away from my interest in physics So I started working at Xerox this guy Bob Taylor who was my boss at Xerox had gone off and hired The most brilliant computer scientists he could find from all over the country because he'd been funding them when he'd worked for DARPA Taylor is an interesting character. He He was a anyway He was a DARPA program manager who initiated the funding for the internet among other things But he knew all these people so he knew Butler Lampson as a brilliant Computer designer. He knew a guy named Alan Kay who was World had been famous at the age of four or something for being on the original quiz kids There was a guy another guy from Berkeley named Peter Deutsch Who was described as being the world's greatest programmer and he he was working at Park so so I went to work this place and that was That was a fantastic atmosphere of brilliant computer innovation Oh, there was an article about Rolling Stone about Xerox Park before I got there and in that article Alan Kay is quoted as saying The people here are amazing. They all have amazing track recorders of technology And they're used to dealing lightning with both hands Whatever whatever that means, but the implication was these were God-like geniuses of computing and indeed they were they were I mean they were every bit as smart as in their own way as my colleagues have been at Berkeley or Carnegie Mellon We're building a personal computer system called the Alto which History showed was sort of the precursor for the Macintosh, which is the precursor for Windows-based personal computing everywhere along with networking along with laser printing along with all the innovations You can imagine we're essentially produced by a small Club of people in Silicon Valley during that time We went to lunch and that Alan said that he wanted me He was wanted to know if I'd be interested in coming to Carnegie Mellon to run this project that was going to build this computer system It's got to start with an innovative and strategic thinker. He said basically the IBM Okay, we're going to create a bunch of software for the campus But you you will be able to sell this at all the campuses of the world And so we're going to so even though we're creating the software you're going to own it And in return for that owning it you're going to play it pay us 75% overhead on our costs So this was from Cyrus point of view. This was a sweetheart deal if you know anything about Carnegie Mellon, you know The Carnegie Mellon is it's always cash flow oriented We in fact sired actually wrote an editorial saying Universities getting patents on their research is a waste of time Universities want to get the grants up front and let the research be in the public domain. So that was his philosophy about University research it wasn't that the university should try to hang on to the hang on to the intellectual property So he just made this deal with IBM without thinking about it He said I'm and I don't he says he and me doesn't have any money to fund this ourselves So you're going to fund the whole thing you're we're going to make a 75% profit on it and And then you'll own the software and I met this guy named JCR Licklider who invented a good deal He he basically made DARPA create computer science at Carnegie Mellon I mean he was he was a seminal character that not many people know about today. I met him I was on an elevator with him. I said, well, are you are you still working at DARPA? Are you know? He said no, I said I'm back at MIT now, but I've been at IBM and so forth I've died. I was only at DARPA for a few years and he said I I've decided I like to repot myself every five years. I Said oh Well, that's an interesting thought So anyway after five so I've been trying to figure out what happened with my life I said, oh, well, apparently that had a big impression on me because after I'd worked on this Andrew project for five or six years I said, no one I don't want to do that anymore in the summer of I don't know 93 or something Alan Newell announced that he was dying and it was it was like a horrible Development for all of us and I and I I felt terrible about it I was never really a close confidant of Alan's but I was the huge admirer of his I called him So I called him up one day. I said I'm sort of embarrassed. I said, I'm sorry I'm really sorry. This is happening to you and he said well, you're not as sorry as I am It was such a cool guy What I perceived to be one of Alan Newell's dying wishes was that we would be doing research in human computer interaction In the computer science department He'd had a bunch of meetings about this and we were all supposed to rally around and create a an effort in Human computer interaction, which was a combination of psychology and computer science with the goal of making computers usable and You know using scientific principles to make computers usable by people Sort of a new sort of a new academic discipline or an amalgam of academic disciplines Newell had tried to start that but he wasn't willing to do the administrative stuff to do it and nobody else was I Was off starting my company. That's all it was all happening in that period But when I got back I said okay To honor the memory of Alan Newell and to do this thing which needs to be done We're going to start that effort and so while I was supposed to be the nominal I was the head of the computer science department. I was trying to start that I saw I said we're gonna we're gonna go hire some Psychologists and we're gonna we're gonna study the way people use computers So and I went there I talked to a famous PR guy there named Regis McKenna who happens to be a native of Pittsburgh And he said and he'd been the guy who put Apple on the map as a as their PR guy And he said if you don't have presence here, you're not here and this was 2000. This was the year 2000 or 1999 and at that point Silicon Valley, you know people used to say silicon people in New York think they're the center of the universe People in Silicon Valley think they are the universe like the people in Silicon Valley said if you're not here, you're nobody so Basically, I talked the university into starting a branch campus and then through clever Negotiations and manipulations with NASA and Raj Reddy and a brilliant guy named Dwayne Adams We got this campus started on the West Coast