Apple Computer

Background:

Working with the Cupertino School District brought David Boulton to the attention of  Apple Computer’s international education marketing manager, Alan Hill.  Alan thought that the Electronic Book and EPL’s Learner Interface were relevant to Apple’s future in education. He arranged for David to get a lab full of Apple computer equipment and advocated his work within Apple as well as to its international customers.

Future of Learning Talks

Alan arranged for David to present his views on the future of learning and the future of educational technology to leading educators from around the world. David did dozens of presentations at Apple’s facilities in Cupertino and Apple also promoted and sponsored many other talks including those in Ottawa, Toronto, and Atlanta. (Read comments and feedback from Apple talks)

The Electronic Campus

Alan also introduced David to Rau Machiraju of Apple University, the internal organizational development department within Apple.  Rau oversaw Apple’s R&D efforts to develop knowledge worker performance tools using case-based reasoning. Conversations with David about The Learner Interface and its feedback processes led to hiring David (as an outside contractor) to design the “Electronic Campus” a virtual university and desk-top performance support system for Apple personnel.

David Bohm at Apple

David Bohm:  Bohm was a friend and student of Albert Einstein. Einstein thought of him like a spiritual son. Bohm’s early theories became classified components of Oppenheimer’s Atomic Bomb. He later wrote the textbook on Quantum Physics used by colleges and universities the world over. After writing the text book he came to disagree with the orthodox interpretation of Quantum Theory and developed his own. Bohm’s physics so threatened the prevailing paradigms that Robert Oppenheimer convened a gather or leading physicists to either “disprove Bohm or agree to ignore him”.

Bohm’s work later influenced John’s Bells Nobel Prize winning work on non-locality (the ground of what we think of today as quantum entanglement). Bohm’s work on plasmas paved the way for the manufacture of semiconductors like the microprocessors at the heart of computers and established the paradigmatic core of what came to be called “new age physics”. and it was because of his views on how physics relates to consciousness that Bohm had become good friends with and the science teacher of the Dali Lama.

David Bohm’s “Implicate Order” influenced David Boulton’s learning into learning (See short video clips: “Co-implication” and “David Bohm“). In 1991, while at Apple University, David Boulton met with Peter Senge and Bill Isaacs. Peter Senge had just released his landmark book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, the centerpiece of which was based on the dialogue work of David Bohm.  David Boulton had been attending David Bohm’s Ojai dialogues for years.

In collaboration with Senge, Isaacs, and others at Apple, David Boulton arranged for David Bohm to come to Apple and meet with Apple brass and Silicon Valley leaders and to address the entire company in a widely attended presentation that was also broadcast on Apple’s internal TV station. Click to listen to David Bohm and David Boulton’s Apple event preparatory conversation. Steve Jobs had temporarily left Apple for Next, but all of Apple’s other top executives were there. John Vasconcellos, the Chair of the Ways and Means of the California Legislature and the political leader most responsible for Silicon Valley’s success was there. So too were some leading management gurus, including Tom Peters.

For more on Bohm see the 2020 film: INFINITE POTENTIAL.

2023 – Could the Universe be Life-Centric? (using Bohm’s implicate order to reimagine the relationship between life and the physical universe)
1990 – ESSAY – SWIMMING IN IMPLICITY (a continuation)
Index to some of David Bohm’s work