ISN Special Report: America’s Greatest Innovations
FOREWORD: Looking Back. Building Forward.
Marc Porat on General Magic, AI, and the Next Era of American Innovation
As America celebrates 250 years of innovation, it is easy to focus on the breakthroughs that changed history. It is far more difficult to recognize the ones that arrived before the world was ready for them.
Few people understand that better than Marc Porat.
Nearly five decades ago, Marc wrote his doctoral dissertation, The Information Economy, envisioning a future in which information would become one of the world’s most valuable economic resources and a major driver of economic and job growth. At a time when computers were largely confined to mainframes and minicomputers, the idea that every person would one day carry a powerful connected computer was still viewed as science fiction.
In 1988, Marc joined Apple’s Advanced Technology Group, where he developed a bold vision for a new kind of personal intelligent communicator. That vision became General Magic, the company spun out of Apple in 1990 to pursue what many believed was impossible. The secret project, “Pocket Crystal,” was a direct precursor to the smartphone.
General Magic wasn’t trying to improve the personal computer. Its vision was to reinvent both computing and telephony.
Years before the internet became mainstream and more than a decade before the iPhone, the team imagined a world built around intelligent mobile devices, cloud-based services, digital messaging, software delivered over networks, mobile intelligent agents, and digital assistants. The ideas were sound. The enabling technology and infrastructure simply weren’t ready.
Commercially, General Magic fell short of its original dream. Its legacy, however, has proven extraordinary.
Many of the engineers, designers, and entrepreneurs who came together at General Magic went on to shape the defining technologies and companies of the digital age. The ideas explored there influenced the evolution of mobile devices, cloud computing, digital assistants, and even the expressive language of emojis. What was once considered a failed startup is now widely regarded as one of Silicon Valley’s most influential companies - not because of what it became, but because of the future it imagined and the people who went on to build it.
Looking back, Marc believes innovation itself has fundamentally changed. The smartphone - the great technological revolution of the last 20 years - changed much of how we live. AI, the great revolution of our era, will change nearly everything, including how we think about our own humanity.
“When we built General Magic, innovation meant betting on a future that didn’t exist yet. We were trying to create a personal intelligent communicator years before the infrastructure, processing power, and networks existed to support it. You had to pull yourself into that future, convince extraordinary people to join you, and spend years solving problems no one had solved before.
AI has fundamentally changed that equation. Capabilities that once required world-class engineering teams, enormous capital, and decades of research are becoming available to almost anyone with curiosity, imagination, and determination. Increasingly, the ability to innovate is no longer determined by where you work, how much money you have, or whether you belong to a major institution. If you can imagine something, you increasingly have the power to build it.
That is what excites me most about this moment. AI is another great technological discontinuity, but this one has the potential to democratize innovation on a scale we have never seen before.
The next 250 years will not be defined by only a handful of breakthrough inventions. They will be shaped by millions of people, from every background and every corner of the world, solving problems that today seem impossible.
Technology alone will not determine that future. We will. Our responsibility is to tilt it toward the positive.”
AI is evolving more rapidly than any technology in the history of civilization. The pace is staggering. It will produce extraordinary benefits - and real risks and dangers. The outcome is not predetermined.
As we reflect on the innovations that defined America’s first 250 years, Marc believes the greatest breakthroughs still lie ahead. The power to innovate, propelled by advanced AI, is becoming more widely accessible than at any point in history, and AI itself is accelerating the pace of innovation. That is why Marc is now working at the frontier of AI: superintelligence.
If America’s first 250 years were defined by extraordinary inventions, its next 250 will be defined by extraordinary innovators - millions of people actively bending the arc of history toward a better future.
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