For something of its size and influence very few people have heard of SRI, but it comes up frequently in 'noided online discussions about the overlap between Silicon Valley and military/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:
I think it's important to note that much (all?) of PARCs research has been oriented around the "office of the future". In the broadest sense of that vision, they had a huge hand in originating a lot of computing technologies.
And while SRI has had their impact in the computing industry, they also have other research labs that have very little to do with computing such as biomedical, education, and policy.
sri was never gonna allow a bunch of hippies and bearded longhairs tour their facility in the spirit of academic comradeship. (IE no microsoft, no apple being allowed to walk around and talk to people in the 80s to get the ideas for Macintosh and Windows)
Ironically, Apple and Microsoft would never allow some stranger company to walk into their offices and see everything they were developing either. lol
By the time apple was founded, many (most) of the people doing research that would be of interest to Jobs had already moved over to PARC. Larry Tesler springs immediately to mind, but Thierry Bardini's book on Engelbart has a more complete list. After the ARC fell apart in 1970, PARC was launching and was a natural place for them to land.
Xerox had two meetings with Apple, in December 1979. Neither they nor Microsoft was ever able to "walk into their offices and see everything they were developing ."
"PARC was not at all secretive about its work. Its researchers published widely, and there was a regular flow of traffic between PARC and Stanford's computer science community. "
as opposed to a military intelligence company where all that would get you fired if not in prison.
Xerox was paid for the crown jewels and according to Larry Tesler, it didn't take any arm-twisting to get him to move to Apple as Xerox was dragging their feet commercializing PARC's innovations.
Xerox received Apple stock for those meetings which they sold in the IPO. I’ve never seen anyone do a calculation of the present value of that stock but it’s probably a significant fraction of Xerox’s market cap today.
Much of the Research leading up to the DaVinci Surgical Robot as is known today was in fact under SRI's umbrella, originally with the purpose of having battle field hospitals with remote surgery teleoperation.
Another great example of the overlap between Silicon Valley and military/intelligence. It's disconcerting how great tech for the masses is often spun out of a warfare motivation.
When I hear SRI, I always think of the parapsychology research they did for 20 or so years from ~1970-1990 and their huge clash with the newly founded skeptical organization CSICOP (now CSI) in the late 70's.
My favorite explanation for the remote viewing stuff is that it was cover for advanced spy satellite imagery and transmission. Explaining away new capabilities you want to keep unknown to the world as "magic." https://twitter.com/mmabeuf/status/1371213766734573569?t=lrW...
The other theory I've encountered is that it was cover for ongoing mind control research after MKULTRA had to be wound down.
And while SRI has had their impact in the computing industry, they also have other research labs that have very little to do with computing such as biomedical, education, and policy.