Wonders whether he's changed the stupid it the unions fault/vouchers will fix things stance. Although to give him credit it was 1996, those sort of ideas were being sprouted all over back then
Steve Jobs's thoughts on the Internet in 1996
31–40 of 44 posts
Re: Steve Jobs's thoughts on the Internet in 1996
#32It annoys me that every 40 year old thinks that the world is getting worse. I used to think it was just the less intelligent people who's minds couldn't keep up with the rate of change. But to hear Jobs say it was disheartening. Death rates from war are the lowest per capita that they have perhaps ever been. People continue to live longer lives. I think that the world allows more upward mobility now than perhaps any time I can think of. Billions of people in India and China are moving towards first world status. Unreadable amounts of information is available at a moments notice. People at the poverty line have things that the richest map 100 years ago couldn't even dream of. When was this heyday where every person was an educated scholar and only the intelligent became leaders. Every complaint like this I hear, I can find 10 examples from history where things were worse. I just don't get it. Maybe I'll understand when I'm 40. I hope I can keep my optimism.
Re: Steve Jobs's thoughts on the Internet in 1996
#33The link is broken on my mobile phone. It sends me to a mobile portal instead of the content.
You can try my project that extracts the article text for easy viewing on mobile phones: http://toadjaw.com/article?url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.wired.com%2f...
FYI, this is used by http://toadjaw.com/hn
Re: Steve Jobs's thoughts on the Internet in 1996
#34It annoys me that every 40 year old thinks that the world is getting worse. I used to think it was just the less intelligent people who's minds couldn't keep up with the rate of change. But to hear Jobs say it was disheartening. Death rates from war are the lowest per capita that they have perhaps ever been. People continue to live longer lives. I think that the world allows more upward mobility now than perhaps any…
The 20th century is considered the most violent century in terms of sheer number. Death rates are a weird thing to think about in per capita terms. If you look at it that way, then an individual life is worth less now than it used to be. Whether your death is a 1 millionth or 1 billionth of the population makes no difference to your family and friends.
There still 90 years left in this century. Judging by previous ones, a lot of awesome and terrible things are going to happen. Technology amplifies man's capacity for creation and destruction. Speaking as a 25 year old, I'm optimistic that life will continue to be an interesting ride.
Re: Steve Jobs's thoughts on the Internet in 1996
#35It annoys me that every 40 year old thinks that the world is getting worse. I used to think it was just the less intelligent people who's minds couldn't keep up with the rate of change. But to hear Jobs say it was disheartening. Death rates from war are the lowest per capita that they have perhaps ever been. People continue to live longer lives. I think that the world allows more upward mobility now than perhaps any…
It all depends on the lens that people see through.
Re: Steve Jobs's thoughts on the Internet in 1996
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting viewpoint. I think Wikipedia, Wikileaks, the use of Blogs, Twitter and even the epitome-of-corporate-antiprivacy that is Facebook by political movements: all present very strong counterevidence to your claim that the web has not been democratized. The heart of any information medium has to be commerce, in that there has to be way to economically support the infrastructure costs of the medium but what make…
Wikipedia is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, because it's controlled by a very small number of elites with no accountability. This is true of Britannica, but the difference is that Wikipedia editors have perversely managed to co-opt populist democratic rhetoric in order to justify what is effectively an oligarchy. The presence of the edit button on each page functions as an ideological mystification to c…
This is one of the more sober commentaries on the internet and power I've read in a long time.
Re: Steve Jobs's thoughts on the Internet in 1996
#37In some ways, his thoughts are some of the most profound things I've read. A very clear articulation of the place of creativity: Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synth…
How do you infer he sees no connection between the two?
He says, 'When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something.'
As an engineer, that's not quite how I think (maybe everyone's different though). What I think about is all the time I spent grokking the subject so that I could see and appreciate the simple connections later.
Diversity in one's approach is really important. And that's underrated -- and powerful that he appreciates that. But perhaps equally important is using the actual design that you've developed to help you find the creative connections. There's just so much focused overlap there. So much quiet feedback that can become powerful -- with a few (somewhat metacircular) iterations, etc.
Re: Steve Jobs's thoughts on the Internet in 1996
#38Very very good interview. So, Steve Jobs were, in 1996, 100% certain the Web Objects will be the future of web development. It didn't happen, and he failed. Do anybody care to think why he failed? I have a very "simpleton" theory. Just throw it out here: Steve Jobs can almost make anything work. He's smart, and he has resources. He can make a good washing machine if he want to. But I think that "anything" will have t…
While his enterprise software product may have failed, what he seems to mean by "web objects" is web service APIs, which have indeed become vastly more important since this interview took place. In fact, that was probably the most prescient thing he said.
Re: Steve Jobs's thoughts on the Internet in 1996
#39> Jobs's obsession with his old rival took the form of an unusual proposal for all parties to voluntarily keep the Web simple and avoid increasingly popular client-side enhancements like HotJava. So Jobs didn't like the idea of Flash back in 1996. He didn't just make that up recently as an excuse.
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Re: Steve Jobs's thoughts on the Internet in 1996
#40It annoys me that every 40 year old thinks that the world is getting worse. I used to think it was just the less intelligent people who's minds couldn't keep up with the rate of change. But to hear Jobs say it was disheartening. Death rates from war are the lowest per capita that they have perhaps ever been. People continue to live longer lives. I think that the world allows more upward mobility now than perhaps any…
The 20th century is considered the most violent century in terms of sheer number. Death rates are a weird thing to think about in per capita terms. If you look at it that way, then an individual life is worth less now than it used to be. Whether your death is a 1 millionth or 1 billionth of the population makes no difference to your family and friends. There still 90 years left in this century. Judging by previous on…
Death rates due to war absolutely should be thought about per capita, because put another way, it's the chance that you yourself, or those you care about, or those you know will meet a violent end, assuming even distribution.
I would rather live in a society where one thousand out of a one million total population die from war compared to a society where one hundred out a thousand do.