As someone born in the USA who had Richard Nixon as his political role model during his formative years, and a New York native to boot, I've got a healthy (maybe too healthy) sense of skepticism about – well, about everything. Count on me to be the devil's advocate when it comes to just about any sensitive issue – political, technological, or social. I'm especially good and adept at arguing with positions I really support – all the better to make sure I'm thinking straight.
But this poster, now – it seems to be a little too “boosterish.” Drip irrigation technology that “turned the desert into a garden of Eden” we all knew about. But Windows NT invented in Israel? Wouldn't that mean that Microsoft as we know it owes its existence to Israel? Anti-virus software? Instant Messaging systems? Surely these are not all Israeli inventions?
So said cynical me; but as an honest cynic, I figured there had to be some basis for these claims. They couldn't say it if it wasn't true – could they? So I set out to find them – and here's what I came up with, following up on some of the highlights of the poster. We all love Israel, but for this study we're going to stick to just the facts, ma'am and sir:
After lots of Web surfing, I decided to give Microsoft Israel a call. Apparently, they get this question a lot; the very pleasant young lady I spoke with said that “Parts of Windows NT were definitely developed in Israel,” but that she could not specify which ones – other than to say they were “probably” mostly “security related.” Security, of course, was NT's biggest selling point, so this young lady may have said more than she meant to. Hmm. On the other hand, she seemed to indicate that NT, as all of Microsoft's products are, was a team effort, with different research groups working on different parts of the program.
Which would mean that Israel, although perhaps an important contributor, did not necessarily develop “most” of NT or XP. I was ready to take that as the situation, in fact – attributing the statement on the poster to overenthusiastic Israel-loving (not that there's anything wrong with that) – until I came across
this site, a technical site that made this statement, in the context of a computer show it was covering in Tel Aviv: “Microsoft also announced Windows NT Embedded which is to be released this year and is being developed at Microsoft R&D centre in Haifa, here in Israel.” Well, if they developed NT Embedded, why not NT itself?
Microsoft Israel's secret actually is the moral of our story: Israel is more than it seems – a lot more – and when you get past the headlines and bombast, whether political or technical, and examine just what it has really managed to accomplish in its short lifetime, you can't help but walk away impressed. Instead of a flag, I think I'll fly my BlueStarPR poster this year!