In 1990, a small team tried to build the future.
They were right about everything—except the timing.
At a secretive Silicon Valley startup called General Magic, a team of engineers spun out of Apple set out to build a handheld computer that would connect anyone to everyone, anywhere.
They envisioned touchscreens, app stores, networked communication, cloud computing… technologies that wouldn't become ubiquitous for another 15 years. They worked around the clock, slept in bunk beds at the office, and believed so completely in what they were building that failure felt impossible. The company collapsed in 1996. The failure was devastating—personally, professionally, financially. But the people didn't disappear.
​
The Magicians went on to co-create the iPod, iPhone, Android, Nest, LinkedIn, Dreamweaver, and the Apple Watch. One became U.S. Chief Technology Officer, another founded eBay, yet another led AI development at Google and Apple. The modern mobile world—the platforms, the ecosystems, the technologies now shaping billions of lives—was built by people who learned their craft at General Magic. They saw the future first. They just got there too early.
W A T C H T H E F I L M
The award-winning film that captures the origin story—with rare footage from inside General Magic as it happened.
W H Y T H E S T O R Y M A T T E R S N O W
The Magicians who failed at General Magic went on to build the modern mobile world with deeply humanistic ideals: tools to empower people, expand freedom, connect communities. Those ideals eventually gave way to platforms that erode privacy, exploit attention, and concentrate power in ways no one anticipated.
Now AI is reshaping everything they built. Their experience—vision without guardrails, capability outpacing consequence—has become the most urgent origin story in technology. We're gathering them to examine what went wrong, what they wish they'd understood sooner, and what today's builders need to grasp before the next wave of technology locks in futures we can't undo.