Bill Joy

{{For |William Joy (fl. 1329–1348), the English architect of the Decorated Gothic style |William Joy}}

{{Infobox scientist

| image = Bill Joy at World Economic Forum (Davos), 2003-01 (cropped).jpg

| caption = Joy in 2003

| birth_name = William Nelson Joy

| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1954|11|8}}

| birth_place = Farmington Hills, Michigan, U.S.

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| fields = Computer science

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| doctoral_advisor =

| academic_advisors = Bob Fabry

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| known_for = BSD{{•}}vi{{•}}csh{{•}}chroot{{•}}TCP/IP driver{{•}}co-founder of Sun Microsystems{{•}}Java{{•}}SPARC{{•}}Solaris{{•}}NFS{{•}}Why The Future Doesn't Need Us

| author_abbrev_bot =

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| children = 2

| awards = *ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award (1986)

Elected to National Academy of Engineering (1999)
Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1999)
Fellow of the Computer History Museum (2011)

| education = University of Michigan (BS)
University of California, Berkeley (MS)

}}

William Nelson Joy (born November 8, 1954) is an American computer engineer and venture capitalist. He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Scott McNealy, Vinod Khosla, and Andy Bechtolsheim, and served as Chief Scientist and CTO at the company until 2003.

He played an integral role in the early development of BSD UNIX while being a graduate student at Berkeley,{{cite web| url = https://dl.acm.org/author_page.cfm?id=81100148022| title = ACM author profile page: William Nelson Joy}} and he is the original author of the vi text editor. He also wrote the 2000 essay "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us", in which he expressed deep concerns over the development of modern technologies.

Joy was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering (1999) for contributions to operating systems and networking software.{{Cite web |date=2009-06-10 |title=Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems Ceo, To Speak At Institute For Advanced Study - Press Release {{!}} Institute for Advanced Study |url=https://www.ias.edu/press-releases/bill-joy-sun-microsystems-ceo-speak-institute-advanced-study |access-date=2022-10-16 |website=www.ias.edu |language=en}}

Early career

Joy was born in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills, Michigan, to William Joy, a school vice-principal and counselor, and Ruth Joy. He earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1979.{{cite web|url=http://berkeley.edu/tour/students/famous_alumni2.html|title=UC Berkeley Online Tour: Famous Alumni|publisher=University of California, Berkeley|access-date=July 1, 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100527100153/http://www.berkeley.edu/tour/students/famous_alumni2.html|archive-date=May 27, 2010|url-status=dead}}

While a graduate student at Berkeley, he worked for Fabry's Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) version of the Unix operating system. He initially worked on a Pascal compiler left at Berkeley by Ken Thompson, who had been visiting the university when Joy had just started his graduate work.

He later moved on to improving the Unix kernel, and also handled BSD distributions.{{cite encyclopedia |title=Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix: From AT&T-Owned to Freely Redistributable|first=Marshall Kirk|last=McKusick|author-link=Marshall Kirk McKusick|encyclopedia=Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution|year=1999|publisher=O'Reilly}} Some of his most notable contributions were the ex and vi editors and the C shell. Joy's prowess as a computer programmer is legendary, with an oft-told anecdote that he wrote the vi editor in a weekend. Joy denies this assertion.Ashlee Vance,[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/09/11/bill_joys_greatest_gift "Bill Joy's greatest gift to man – the vi editor"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140603174753/https://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/09/11/bill_joys_greatest_gift|date=2014-06-03}}, The Register, September 11, 2003. A few of his other accomplishments have also been sometimes exaggerated; Eric Schmidt, CEO of Novell at the time, inaccurately reported during an interview in PBS's documentary Nerds 2.0.1 that Joy had personally rewritten the BSD kernel in a weekend.{{cite web| url = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08PmIv1l5LY| title = Eric Schmidt: At Berkeley, Bill Joy written and rewritten the kernel over a weekend. No human on the planet could do this except for Bill| website = YouTube}}

In 1980, he also wrote cat -v,displays nonprinting characters, except for tabs and the end of line character{{cite web |url=https://fossil.fuhrwerks.com/csrg/fdiff?v1=d6eb5fa5a41b9648&v2=7fb8837733dec112 |title=Computer Systems Research Group BSD Distribution: Diff |last=Joy |first=Bill |date=October 10, 1980 |publisher=Computer Systems Research Group |access-date=December 15, 2022 |quote=case 'v':}} about which Rob Pike and Brian W. Kernighan wrote that it went against Unix philosophy.{{cite journal |title=Program Design in the UNIX Environment |author1=Rob Pike |author2=Brian W. Kernighan |date=October 1984 |url=https://harmful.cat-v.org/cat-v/unix_prog_design.pdf |journal=AT&T Bell Laboratories Technical Journal |volume=63 |issue=8 |at=part 2 |access-date=December 15, 2022 |quote=cat therefore shouldn’t transform its input}}

According to a Salon article, during the early 1980s, DARPA had contracted the company Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) to add TCP/IP to Berkeley UNIX. Joy had been instructed to plug BBN's stack into Berkeley Unix, but he refused to do so, as he had a low opinion of BBN's TCP/IP. So, Joy wrote his own high-performance TCP/IP stack. According to John Gage:

{{blockquote|BBN had a big contract to implement TCP/IP, but their stuff didn't work, and grad student Joy's stuff worked. So they had this big meeting and this grad student in a T-shirt shows up, and they said, "How did you do this?" And Bill said, "It's very simple — you read the protocol and write the code.|John Gage}}

Rob Gurwitz, who was working at BBN at the time, disputes this version of events.[http://www.salon.com/2000/05/16/chapter_2_part_one/ "BSD Unix: Power to the people, from the code"], Andrew Leonard, Salon, May 16, 2000.

Sun Microsystems

In 1982, after the firm had been going for six months, Joy, Sun's sixteenth employee, was brought in with full co-founder status at Sun Microsystems.{{cite book |last=Hall |first=Mark |author-link= |date=1990 |title=Sunburst: the ascent of Sun Microsystems |url=https://archive.org/details/sunburstascentof00hall |location=Chicago |publisher=Contemporary Books |page=8 |isbn=9780809243686 |quote=he was Sun's sixteenth employee}} At Sun, Joy was an inspiration for the development of NFS, the SPARC microprocessors,{{cite web| url = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NPoFtCGuTs| title = SPARC: The Power of Ideas| website = YouTube}} the Java programming language, Jini/JavaSpaces,{{Cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bill-Joy|title=Bill Joy {{!}} American software developer and entrepreneur|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|language=en|access-date=2018-12-20}} and JXTA.{{Cite book|title=Peer to peer : collaboration and sharing over the Internet|first=Bo|last=Leuf|date=2002|publisher=Addison-Wesley|isbn=0201767325|oclc=1058000048}}

In 1986, Joy was awarded a Grace Murray Hopper Award by the ACM for his work on the Berkeley UNIX Operating System.{{cite web| url = https://awards.acm.org/award_winners/joy_6968593| title = 1986 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award: William Nelson Joy}}

On September 9, 2003, Sun announced Joy was leaving the company and that he "is taking time to consider his next move and has no definite plans".{{cite web| url = https://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/09/09/bill_joy_leaves_sun/| title = Bill Joy leaves Sun Microsystems| website = The Register}}{{cite web| url = https://www.cnet.com/news/co-founder-joy-to-leave-sun/| title = Co-founder Bill Joy to leave Sun}}{{cite web| url = https://www.marketwatch.com/story/sun-microsystems-co-founder-bill-joy-to-leave-company| title = Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy to leave company}}{{cite web| url = https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Sun-sets-on-pioneer-Bill-Joy-Co-founder-2557959.php| title = Sun sets on pioneer Bill Joy / Co-founder, leading technologist resigns| date = 10 September 2003}}{{cite web| url = https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2003/10/13/350901/index.htm| title = Bill Joy After Sun With his corporate ties cut, the "Edison of the Net" speaks freely on the challenges facing Sun, the Net, and, of course, Microsoft}}

Post-Sun activities

In 1999, Joy co-founded a venture capital firm, HighBAR Ventures, with two Sun colleagues, Andy Bechtolsheim and Roy Thiele-Sardiña. In January 2005 he was named a partner in venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. There, Joy has made several investments in green energy industries, even though he does not have any credentials in the field.{{cite web| url = https://www.cnet.com/news/bill-joy-on-suns-downfall-microsofts-prospects-green-tech-q-a/| title = "Bill Joy on Sun's downfall, Microsoft's prospects, green tech (Q&A)", Ina Fried, CNET News, May 25, 2010| date = 25 May 2010}} He once said, "My method is to look at something that seems like a good idea and assume it's true".[http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050114020135/http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html |date=2005-01-14 }}, Clay Shirky, Networks, Economics, and Culture mailing list, July 1, 2003, from a speech at ETech, April 2003

In 2011, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Computer History Museum for his work on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) Unix system and the co-founding of Sun Microsystems.[http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/hall/bios/Bill,Joy/ "2011 Fellow: Bill Joy"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150103005111/http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/hall/bios/Bill,Joy/ |date=2015-01-03 }}, Computer History Museum, retrieved 17 June 2013

Technology concerns

In 2000, Joy gained notoriety with the publication of his article in Wired magazine, "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us", in which he declared, in what some have described as a "neo-Luddite" position,{{Cite magazine|title=Why the Future Doesn't Need Us|language=en-us|magazine=Wired|url=https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/|access-date=2020-12-09|issn=1059-1028}} that he was convinced that growing advances in genetic engineering and nanotechnology would bring risks to humanity. He argued that intelligent robots would replace humanity, at the very least in intellectual and social dominance, in the relatively near future. He supports and promotes the idea of abandonment of GNR (genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics) technologies, instead of going into an arms race between negative uses of the technology and defense against those negative uses (good nano-machines patrolling and defending against Grey goo "bad" nano-machines). This stance of broad relinquishment was criticized by technologists such as technological-singularity thinker Ray Kurzweil, who instead advocates fine-grained relinquishment and ethical guidelines.[http://www.kurzweilai.net/are-we-becoming-an-endangered-species-technology-and-ethics-in-the-twenty-first-century "Are We Becoming an Endangered Species? Technology and Ethics in the Twenty First Century"], Ray Kurzweil, Essays, November 20, 2001, originally presented on November 19, 2001 at Washington National Cathedral.{{cite news|last1=Valpy|first1=Michael|title=Will we invent our own worst enemies?|date=23 June 2001|url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/incoming/will-we-invent-our-own-worst-enemies/article762002/|access-date=12 June 2014|newspaper=The Globe and Mail}} Joy was also criticized by The American Spectator, which characterized Joy's essay as a (possibly unwitting) rationale for statism.

A bar-room discussion of these technologies with Ray Kurzweil started to set Joy's thinking along this path. He states in his essay that during the conversation, he became surprised that other serious scientists were considering such possibilities likely, and even more astounded at what he felt was a lack of consideration of the contingencies. After bringing the subject up with a few more acquaintances, he states that he was further alarmed by what he felt was that although many people considered these futures possible or probable, that very few of them shared as serious a concern for the dangers as he seemed to. This concern led to his in-depth examination of the issue and the positions of others in the scientific community on it, and eventually, to his current activities regarding it.

Despite this, he is a venture capitalist, investing in {{Abbr|GNR|genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics}} technology companies.[https://www.wired.com/magazine/2013/04/bill-joy/ "Bill Joy on Venture Capital, Clean Tech, and Big Boats"], Steven Levy, Wired Magazine, April 16, 2013 He has also raised a specialty venture fund to address the dangers of pandemic diseases, such as the H5N1 avian influenza and biological weapons.

Joy's law

=Of management=

In his 2013 book Makers, author Chris Anderson credited Joy with establishing "Joy's law" based on a quip: "No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else [other than you]."Chris Anderson, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution, 143. His argument was that companies use an inefficient process by not hiring the best employees, only those they are able to hire. His "law" was a continuation of Friedrich Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society" and warned that the competition outside of a company would always have the potential to be greater than the company itself.Chris Anderson, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution, 144.

=Of computing=

Joy devised a formula in 1983, also called Joy's law, stating that the peak computer speed doubles each year and thus is given by a simple function of time. Specifically,

: $S = 2^{Y-1984},$

in which {{mvar|S}} is the peak computer speed attained during year {{mvar|Y}}, expressed in MIPS.{{cite journal |title=The not-so-distant future of personal computing |author=John Markoff |journal=InfoWorld |date=December 13, 1993 |page=49}}

References

External links

{{TED speaker}}
{{C-SPAN|85893}}

{{IMDb name|2699317}}
[http://ex-vi.sourceforge.net/viin/paper.html An Introduction to Display Editing with Vi]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20120507165453/http://www.bigpicture.tv/speakers/bill_joy Bill Joy], video clips at Big Picture TV
[https://web.archive.org/web/20140603174753/https://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/09/11/bill_joys_greatest_gift/ Excerpts from a 1999 Linux Magazine interview regarding the development of vi]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20160316234314/http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/transcripts/003.html NerdTV interview] (video, audio, and transcript available) - 30 June 2005
[http://video.mit.edu/watch/the-six-webs-10-years-on-9110/ The Six Webs, 10 Years On - speech at MIT Emerging Technologies conference], September 29, 2005
[http://www.droppingknowledge.org/bin/user/listitems/answer_view/6439.page Bill Joy at Dropping Knowledge], his answers to the 100 questions at Dropping Knowledge's Table of Free Voices event in Berlin, 2006.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20110420215435/http://www.computerhistory.org/events/index.php?id=1120598654 Computer History Museum, Sun Founders Panel], January 11, 2006