Isaacson: The Genius of Jobs
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The thing Jobs and Einstein had in common was an insatiable curiosity that helped them get to a place where they could see the world in a way that few others do. Jobs saw the connections between technology and humanities and relentlessly worked toward making his vision reality.
Einstein became a genius because he would relentlessly explore a problem, following it out farther than anyone had taken it before. This allowed him to see how the universe connects in a way that no one had seen before, and his discoveries were valuable to humanity.
Getting to these rare perspectives is usually a product of building up a mental framework and then seeing patterns in- and making associations or connections among seemingly unrelated phenomena. True genius is seeing associations among things previously unseen. A high IQ gives you more ability to build the mental framework needed to see these associations, and a genius has actually applied it.
> Yet talent is unequally distributed. Some innovators (like Edison, or Newton, or Kelvin) are simply better than others. But if genius is not jumping ahead of the inevitable, where do the "greats" fit in? Simonton discovered that the higher the prominence of a scientist (as determined by the number of pages their biography occupies in encyclopedias) the greater number of simultaneous discoveries they are involved with. Kelvin was involved in 30 sets of simultaneous discoveries. Great discovers not only contribute more than the average number of "next" steps, but are heavily involved in those steps that have greatest impact, which naturally are the areas of investigation that attract many other players, and so produce multiples. If discovery is a lottery, the great buy lots of tickets.
You can control your environment if you see and understand its connections. Whatever Jobs saw and understood enabled him to create Apple, NeXT, and Pixar, and ultimately build Apple back to the most valuable technology company in the world.
Apropos Bill Gates and puzzle solving, http://www.borrett.id.au/computing/petals-bg.htm
But I don't believe that many very intelligent men took more than 10 minutes to solve this problem, unless it was presented to them in some dramatically different way (eg, the name was not emphasized as much as it was here).
Steve Jobs is Eddie Van Halen. A tortured virtuoso artist who is not only a master at guitars and keyboards. This guy produced some of the most innovative guitar playing in the 70s and 80s. He also created some of the most kick ass rock and roll songs of all time.
Satch plays awesome guitar. EVH creates awesome music.
Steve Jobs did not have mastery of the instrument. He was "technically limited", but still able to create compelling products. If you wanted to keep the analogy, it would be better to say that he was Bob Dylan (coincidentally, he was one of SJ personal idols).
Anyway, I'm going to try again: can you please stop with the Apple fanboyism? Such blind worshiping and your monotonic comments are so annoying that it makes me want to dislike anything about SJ and Apple.
That's just how insecure people describe him so they can feel better about themselves.
Face it, you can not have it both ways. Either Steve Jobs mastery was in taking ideas that were already there and putting it together in a way that was appealing to the common man (the "Bob Dylan"), or he was someone so ahead of its time that people could not comprehend him, pushing the state further to a level that others could not keep up - the "Satriani".
As for your childish insult... I could go on a long diatribe about how the insecurity usually lies in people that need to put others on a pedestal, but you'd need to get out of the Reality Distortion field to be able to understand it.
And that staement was meant for Bill Gates, but if you were insulted then I guess you're guilty.
I had enough of you. Bye.
The fields where we toss around the word "genius" like it's lettuce are all, IMO, severely undermanned and under-appreciated. Fields like physics, engineering, mathematics, atronomy, biology, music, etc. When we think "genius" names like Mozart, Einstein, Hawking, et al come to mind. I wouldn't mind if people flocked towards said fields.
Instead, we have a giant talent drain into fields where we do call people "greedy" for their participation. Investment banking, for example. The labeling of people as "greedy" hasn't stopped the deluge of people pouring into said fields, and the label of "genius" hasn't really helped the ranks of academics and artists.
I would be very delighted if indeed people flocked to a field known for "geniuses".
Regarding math and science, I do observe that academic pursuit in those fields is undervalued in social terms (in my opinion at least). Being a logical person, I conclude that it must be due to the law of supply and demand and, and that the supply (the number of average-quality science grad students) outweighs the demand. Now you can disagree with me all you want, but a lot of middle-of-the-road grad schools I've seen are depressing places filled with kids who have no idea what to do with their lives (if they did, they probably would not be in grad school at this day and age). They would probably be much better off working for a company yet seventy percent of them can't get a U.S. visa. Now most American students in their turn aren't that interested in spending six years of their young lives in classes and labs filled with people who speak mostly Mandarin, for example, so they don't go into STEM fields either.
I really think that the practice of U.S. graduate schools to make money off foreign students without offering them visas that allow for U.S. employment is something downright awful. Either give the graduates U.S. employment/visas or don't let them into the country in the first place. I'm leaning towards the first option.
It's all supply and demand. More people joining a particular field does not mean higher prestige to people who are already there -- often it's quite the opposite.
Their hard work improves their talent relentlessly, which is why they appear so gifted. I think.
Which, to me, is inspiring. It means they don't have anything I don't.
To me they reek of pop-psych bullshittery - as if somehow my responses to "why are manhole covers round" would represent some divine introspection to my inner personality and capabilities... or that my ability to gauge the temperatures of three light bulbs is in any way connected to my engineering ability.
A choice quote from a man known as Osho...
> Intellect takes things apart to see how they work; intelligence puts things together to see the functioning of the whole.
(note that the above is greatly simplified, both are needed, neither is better, and there is overlap between the two)
One is analytic and clinical, it can be put in a book and taught to people. It has a limit that's set by your neuron connections.
The other is more spontaneous, exploratory, and creative.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Rajneeshee_bioterror_attac...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Rajneeshee_assassination_p...
Osho was not all seeing and knowing. The events that took place did so due to power hungry people that were attracted to him.
Would you blame Christ for the sins of the Church?
If you read any of Osho's material you'll find more insight on a single page, then you've received in your entire k12 education.
He might have made some mistakes but I doubt he was actively poisoning people and herding children like they were cattle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Osho_Drive_By.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osho_%28Bhagwan_Shree_Rajneesh%...
Osho was all about de-programming. Not having a belief system.
Every time someone asked him a question, he would give an answer which always showed how misguided the question was, that, and an incredible amount of insight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQFUpOOINd8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8gtLtaNTwo
Imagine a Buddha with 99 Rolls-Royces and a collection of diamond encrusted watches. Thats Osho! A contradiction.
Those where mere students waiting to get close to someone they considered to be a rock-star. They're just going the distance.
They had a community building-out there on a ranch, which they wanted to turn into a city.
Osho was the center peace.
That's not a contradiction. That's evidence staring you in the face.
To me, this is just an abusive twisting of the word "genius". I know it has different meanings to different people, but I think being smart, or having some kind of intellectual capacity, is probably the best common ground between definitions.
It seems like Isaacson thinks being a genius just means being really good at something. Dan Marino and JFK are geniuses based on their prowess in their respective fields.
In science, as well as in other fields of human endeavor, there are two kinds of geniuses: the “ordinary” and the “magicians.” An ordinary genius is a fellow that you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what he has done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. They are, to use mathematical jargon, in the orthogonal complement of where we are and the working of their minds is for all intents and purposes incomprehensible. Even after we understand what they have done, the process by which they have done it is completely dark. They seldom, if ever, have students because they cannot be emulated and it must be terribly frustrating for a brilliant young mind to cope with the mysterious ways in which the magician’s mind works. Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest caliber.
That's a strange statement, because Feynman was perhaps the most revered physics teacher of the 20th century.
Being intelligent is no the best common ground because there are so few of them out of many intelligent people. It is creating an artificial common ground.
>Dan Marino and JFK are geniuses based on their prowess in their respective fields.
As great as those you mentioned were, they are not geniuses. Dan Marino did not change the game of football. He had a great arm and was very good at recognizing defenses. People like Joe Montana and Lawrence Taylor changed the game because opposing teams had to develop strategies just around those two players.
JFK, while great, was not a genius. Though he does have the Cuban missile crisis as his crowning achievement, he didn't even finish his first term. Much of JFK is about symbolism rather than accomplishments.
You can't pretend that Michael Jordan is simply some preternatural freak of athletic nature. I mean, he is that, but there are others stronger, faster, smarter and with much better leadership qualities then he could ever pretend. But none could excel in such ways as he could, not even his successor, LeBron James. The way he could push himself along with his team. He elevated modern basketball to the stratosphere, and inspired countless basketball players and coaches.
I also disagree with that law because there is always a handful of people capable of explaining an advanced technology, but no one can explain magic. For example, Siri might seem magical to end-users with no technical background but it is definitely not magical to the engineers and programmers who made it.
Understanding design and people and making it applicable to his chosen profession.
>...it is definitely not magical to the engineers and programmers who made it.
It's obviously not magic but, for the large majority, it appears to be so. Even if you wanted to explain how the concept of Siri works to the average person they wouldn't want you to. I think it would ruin it for them.
I'm not sure if you're saying engineers in general, or specifically the ones who programmed it.
I'll say this: I tried Siri for the first time the other day. It is magical. Not because any single part of what it does is such a huge leap, but the way in which it combines existing elements to create a whole new direction which is so much greater than its parts.
While Google was busy making voice-driven Google searches, Apple was making voice-driven user interface.
Overall, I was amazed at how much more integrated and useful the iPhone was than my Android device. Siri just brings that to a whole new UI level that others had the technical ability to bring, but not the willingness.
Is that a product of genius? I don't know, but I get the impression that both Google and Microsoft are driven by committee, and have very smart people who can't seem to really finish anything properly. They seem to lack creative genius, leadership, and/or drive.
OK sorry, my brain hurts, probably that means I am not a genius.
"China and India are likely to produce many rigorous analytical thinkers and knowledgeable technologists. But smart and educated people don’t always spawn innovation. America’s advantage, if it continues to have one, will be that it can produce people who are also more creative and imaginative, those who know how to stand at the intersection of the humanities and the sciences. That is the formula for true innovation, as Steve Jobs’s career showed."
It is for this reason, short term economic maladies aside, in the longer run the United States will remain the strongest nation in the world.
He told me he began to appreciate the power of intuition, in contrast to what he called “Western rational thought,” when he wandered around India after dropping out of college. “The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do,” he said. “They use their intuition instead … Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work.”
I've got copies of both Einstein: His Life and Universe and Steve Jobs on my nightstand right now, awaiting their respective time slices, and I've got to say that this article didn't make me optimistic about diving into them.
[1] http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/things-are-so-bad-...
Moreover, when we do look at the "humanities," the wisdom gained from China's five-thousand year history trumps that of this country.
in the end, it is not how long knowledge has accumulated in a place but how open people are to learning from others.
And how open is often a crap shoot accident of history. The US forced Japan open when Admiral Perry paid Tokyo a visit. Had he only gone to North Korea instead, history would have been completely different.
As for China, what they've gained culturally in the last 5000 years became irrelevant once communism took hold.