Karlin Lillington ‘Ahanging garden of Babylon overlooking Silicon Valley,” is Rich Gold’s description of the most famous research laboratory in the history of computing, Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, or Parc. Oddly, the place where virtually all of modern computing was invented is not a computer company but a self-proclaimed ”document company”. Windows, screen icons, the mouse, the laser printer, WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) printing and Ethernet (connecting PCs into a high-speed local network), even funny screensavers – all were developed two decades ago. Xerox brought almost none of these ideas to market. Turning the company in new directions has been a partial contributor to severe losses recently, but Parc seems oblivious to something as ephemeral as quarterly results. ”Parc is a cauldron of ideas, of thought, of new technology,” says Gold, whose biography describes him as an ”applied cartoonist” and ”former consultant in virtual reality”. New ideas include prototype modular robots that can move by themselves, link and modify their function as part of a larger unit. Researchers want to create them on a microscopic level, where millions would gather to create working objects. ”You could buy a box of modules and tell them to make a printer,” suggests Gold, adding drily that this ”won’t be a product soon”. The lab has a full-blown Mems (micro electro mechanical systems) division. Mems are minute machines built on a silicon chip; researchers have even created tiny tweezers capable of grabbing a single bacterium. Optical Mems could enhance printers and copiers. Now such devices run on a single or dual laser focused through a mirror – a printing mechanism that is book-sized – but Mems could make them pea-sized. These technologies would enable what researcher Eric Peeters calls ”bat out of hell printing”. Underlying all Xerox research is ethnography, the study of human behaviour. Decades ago researchers videotaped volunteers who were told to make certain kinds of copies on a copier they had never used before. The engineers and researchers were stunned to see that people didn’t interact with the machine in the ways they expected. The video led to a rethink at Parc. Ethnographers now work on all research projects. ”Truly useful technology supports and enhances natural human capacities and practices,” says ethnographer Jack Whalen. ”We’re trying to look five, 10, 20 years down the road and ethnography helps with that human-scape envisioneering.”