Mitch Kapor
Mitch Kapor
Mitchell David Kapor, born November 1, 1950, is an entrepreneur best known for promoting the first spreadsheet VisiCalc, and later founding Lotus, where he was instrumental in developing the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet. He left Lotus in 1986. In 1990 with John Perry Barlow and John Gilmore, he co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and served as its chairman until 1994. Kapor has been an investor in the personal computing industry, and supporter of social causes, like the Hidden Genius Project, The...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth1 November 1950
CountryUnited States of America
Everyone has a subconscious and automatic preference of this over that. Once you're aware of that, you can take steps to change.
Failing to continue to support the public higher-ed system in California will have devastating long-term consequences.
Even though I had the talent, programming just didn't feel right. I never considered it very seriously. Some people get gratification from bending a machine to their will. I didn't.
People in the industry foresee a time in which, for many people, the only thing they'll need on a computer is a browser.
Jazz was a bomb. That was also the low point of Mac sales. People had just written it off.
I think there are questions about whether there will continue to be a real basis for innovation and open platforms. If they don't permit true innovation and true openness, it will not provide maximum benefit to the people.
Life in cyberspace is often conducted in primitive frontier conditions, but it is a life which, at its best, is more egalitarian than elitist and more decentralized than hierarchical. It serves individuals and communities, not mass audiences, and it is extraordinarily multi-faceted in the purposes to which it is put.
It is possible to take a population of students who are failing and whose schools are failing them, who are being written off as not being college material, and if they have the right support, they can all go to college and succeed.
The computer environment is radically different today. In the 1980s, it was like the Wild West, with a lot of open territory. Now, the cowboys have moved out and the farmers have moved in.
I routinely failed to understand that 'simple and straightforward' would have been a much better product strategy for Lotus.
If only I'd stayed on the West Coast, I might have made something of myself.
If you look at the history of other movements, whether Civil Rights or environmental rights, these are all decades-long undertakings.
I think there is widespread agreement that there is a crisis in public education.
A typical medical practice is like an old-fashioned business which keeps all of its records on paper. It can probably track down any individual transaction if it needs to, but it's basically helpless when it comes to overall measurements of performance. And that's the big problem.