Steve Jobs Ponders His Legacy In Never-Before-Seen 1994 Video

> "It's sort of like a sentiment of rocks.

You meant 'sediment of rocks'?

> Steve Jobs had such a way with words.

Oh absolutely. There are so many classy lines from him. And some of these lines are going to impact our industry for years to come.

Take for example: The 'Post-PC era'?

Damn just those three words. They paint an altogether new story that is going to be written all over again! It gives an excitement and pumps blood back into what our industry does best - wow the users.

This is why Ritchie and McCarthy deserve a special place in computing heaven.

> Steve Jobs had such a way with words.

More importantly, his way with words was indicative of a remarkable clarity of thought.

It's interesting you say your first sentence there, because I was thinking exactly the same thing: Steve was always so good with words. I think that, combined with his impeccable taste for new product design and iterations, was his greatest strength.

Reminds me of those monks that spend weeks making beautiful, meticulous sand mandalas, who then destroy them immediately upon completion.

> "This is not a field where one paints a painting which will be looked at for centuries...This is a field where one does his work and in ten years it is obsolete."

master of the obvious.

... unless your Steve Jobs, in which case you get to stand on top of the mountain and tell everyone else how to build it.

I think you're missing his point. None of what you listed is what Steve Jobs made. He made Apple I, Apple II, MacIntosh, etc. He was talking about his legacy. And he was right about it.

I think if you had asked him specifically about software engineers working on underlying technology, he probably would have recognized that. After all, he was working on NeXT there, which was using that same technology.

This clip actually made me respect his intelligence more than I had prior.

You're absolutely right. Steve Jobs was not right on this. To quote him:

>This is a field where one does one's work and in 10 years it's obsolete and really will not be usable in 10 to 20 years.

There are many, many examples of technologies that have been around several decades and will be around for several more.

I also disagree with:

>You can't go back and use an Apple I...You won't be able to even fire it up and see what it was like

In the last year I've used emulators for a Commodore 64, an Apple II and arcade computers from the late 70s / early 80s.

With the other examples you gave of things that have been around for several decades, I think Steve really missed the mark on this.

Then why do millions of people flock to the Mona Lisa or Shakespeare?

I do see TCP/IP as an art form, but it's not one that ever gets examined. It gets used. There's a bit of a difference in my opinion.

I think he is talking about implementations, not protocols and interfaces.

These can last a long time, but look where PCX is now...

In a way, his work supports the work of UNIX and Ritchie. He states that tech work on a large scale is often like setting pavement. UNIX APIs are a progression of that. The fact that many can use a computer without understanding the underpinnings of an OS is a testament to Jobs.

The work of a lifetime is paradoxical like that. It is very rare that someone achieves something truly memorable when they set permanence as their primary goal.

I think the massive piles of money coming in may have been a contributing factor...

Just last night on IRC I was commenting on the stinkeye I received at a company once when I suggested their tagging functionality mimic Stack Overflow's. Even though their product was a multiuser version of something that had existed at 1:1 scale for a decade, never did I hear it described in terms of what already existed. Based on more than this one example, I am convinced that there is a beautiful-farts narcissism in startups today where everybody thinks they're doing something new when they're really just making a drag-and-drop Megaupload, in-browser Sublime Text, Flickr-with-animation, or whatever.

To stretch the metaphor: I think we're lucky if what we do becomes real sediment that others build upon. Most programming work is throw-away business code that no one will ever build upon and will be whisked away by the wind.

It doesn't matter though, we do what we do for the love (or compulsion) of creation. I'm quite certain Michelangelo loved painting above all else, and that's the necessary but not sufficient fact for him to achieve something like the Sistine Chapel. Who knows how many great painters are completely lost to history?

But the use doesn't destroy the creations! It's not like they printed off a finite number of Apple IIs and waited for all of their caps to blow 20 years later. They got thrown in the landfill when they were running on all 4 legs.

The song "Jed the Humanoid" (by Grandaddy) captures my attitude pretty well.

But here's Amazon review:

"I was threatened with legal action and personal attacks via email from the president of the Silicon Valley Historical Association over the above review (which is against not only the 1st Amendment, but also Amazon's policies), and then my review was removed. Therefore I am posting this review again (...)

In my opinion, if you are looking for a film about Steve Jobs, this is NOT it. In this hour-long film, there is only 15 minutes and 57 seconds of interview footage of Jobs. The rest is footage of the filmmaker himself, some cheesy stock video clips, interviews with other Silicon Valley founders, and historians/academics talking about the growth of Silicon Valley and comparing it to the Renaissance era and the invention of the Gutenberg printing press. After about 40 minutes into the film, there is hardly any discussion about Jobs at all. There is, however, a nearly 20 minute long segment of various random people explaining why they think the Information Age and Silicon Valley is EXACTLY like the Renaissance period, followed immediately by a clip of Jobs saying, "Nah, it's not like the Renaissance AT ALL." The film is wrapped up quickly with no real conclusion leaving the viewer wondering what the hell they just watched. And to make the whole thing worse, every interview has really annoying music (think screeching saxophones) playing behind it, which becomes so distracting that you stop listening to what the interviewee is even saying.

The one good thing I can say is that it is very interesting to hear what Steve Jobs has to say in these interviews...."

And it's $15 for video, $5 for audio.

No shit. A 1994 video that's old.

If I remember the nerd facts from my junior high family vacation to Banff correctly, I think the Canadian Rockies were formed that way.

Panta rei...

That's different. This new posting is a different clip (although seemingly from the same interview).

It begins with "The following clip has never been publicly shown before." It's less than 2 minutes, and you'll probably enjoy it. Buying the full interview (Production Date: January 2013; Playing Time: 60 Minutes) would support Silicon Valley Historical Association:

http://www.siliconvalleyhistorical.org/#!steve-jobs-film/c1x...

It is insightful for software engineers because we feel like we're building things when in fact we're just providing a service which will likely be gone and forgotten 10 years from now. That's why I find it's important to also have other pursuits that allow you to point at a permanent physical object and say "I made that"