While Weiser worked for a variety of computer related startups, his seminal work was in the field of ubiquitous computing while leading the computer science laboratory at PARC, which he joined in 1987. His ideas were significantly influenced by his father's reading of Michael Polanyi's "The Tacit Dimension". He became head of the computer science laboratory in 1988 and chief technology officer in 1996, authoring more than eighty technical publications.[2]