I’m reading The New New Thing by Michael Lewis about Jim Clark and his ventures, and was struck by some parallels to Google, assuming one squints through properly aligned polarized lenses. In 1981, Clark tried to sell his graphics tech to a couple of the big computer companies, but none were interested and so he had to go it alone, much like Yahoo passed on the chance to buy Google. Then in 1991 or so, SGI partnered with Time Warner to build a telecomputer for TVs and wire them up via cable. The future of interactive media had arrived. They were going to transform Orlando, FL with high speed digital awesome. Sounds a lot like Google and Google TV and Kansas City. They even built a computer for the TV that nobody bought, like the Nexus Q. Clark himself, after agitating to launch this telecomputer craze, decided that interactive media wasn’t the future, the internet was. It’s funny to think that Google has decided the internet isn’t the future, interactive TV is the future.