Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to join SRI International

For something of its size and influence very few people have heard of SRI, but it comes up frequently in &#x27;noided online discussions about the overlap between Silicon Valley and military&#x2F;intelligence. A lot of the things that PARC was credited with creating in the first place were really dreamed up at SRI, so it makes a certain sense for them to be merging:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;squamuglia.wordpress.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;04&#x2F;16&#x2F;67&#x2F;#more-67" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;squamuglia.wordpress.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;04&#x2F;16&#x2F;67&#x2F;#more-67</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;squamuglia.wordpress.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;04&#x2F;22&#x2F;yes-kids-cookie-monster-is-a-psyop&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;squamuglia.wordpress.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;04&#x2F;22&#x2F;yes-kids-cookie-...</a>

I think Xerox has been trying to unload PARC for a while, and this just seems like a way for them to do it and get a tax write-off since it&#x27;s a &#x27;donation&#x27;. PARC has already been doing a lot of government contract work, and I&#x27;ve seen teams from PARC and SRI compete for certain programs, so there&#x27;s definitely synergy there. But I think PARC was historically more commercially oriented than SRI, so there will be some cultural differences internally.<p>Over time Xerox has gone quite far from where it was when PARC was founded and I think internal support for it had weakened a lot.<p>The bigger problem both orgs have historically had is on compensation and retaining talent. A lot of people tend to leave or get poached by major companies and their R&amp;D units - lots of former PARC folks at X, and lots of former SRI folks across various robotics companies.

PARC and SRI in the news? what is this, 1993? am I going to see a DECWRL announcement next?

SRI was Stanford University affiliates&#x27; dodge around the school&#x27;s charter to work to work on MIC projects such as work for DARPA. Not quite RAND but still not saints.

Will this mean that PARC will transition towards doing more government funded research? SRI is pretty heavily funded by the government as far as I know.

As a software engineer since the 1980s, of course I know (Xerox) PARC. But am I the only one for whom SRI does not ring any bells? I&#x27;m confident Wikipedia can tell me more, but if they don&#x27;t tell in their press release I would claim they might overestimate their &quot;brand&quot;.

SRI completely developed Abundant Robotics..the first apple harvester robot. It was the only one of its kind. But American VCs ..being who they are … do not consider real Ag worthy and let it die. Abundant Robotics went bankrupt and went into liquidation..the last I heard, their IPs sold to a small Chinese led incubator.<p>SRI has its fingers in a lot of pies..including surgical robotics.

Remember that SRI is a patent troll. They are non-practicing entity. They don&#x27;t build the things they &quot;invent&quot;. They instead write patents then extort the people who do build things.<p>I say this from personal experience. I created many inventions in &quot;intrusion detection&quot;, spent years in data centers making theory work in practice. SRI sued me using vaguely worded patents.<p>It&#x27;s a harsh accusation, but objectively true. They never built a commercial intrusion-detection product, but they did sue people.

Somehow, I see 2 empty campuses merging to sell off their real estate value that is currently worth more than any new intellectual property being produced.

The whole is lesser than the sum of its parts.