41–50 of 122 posts
I don't think this would have been possible elsewhere on Earth. There was a unique combination of people, places, events and things that allowed all of these innovations to flourish.
> Jobs: Computers are actually pretty simple. We’re sitting here on a bench in this café [for this part of the Interview]. Let’s assume that you understood only the most rudimentary of directions and you asked how to find the rest room. I would have to describe it to you in very specific and precise instructions. I might say, “Scoot sideways two meters off the bench. Stand erect. Lift left foot. Bend left knee until…
I don’t know, should it be special to be able to explain things? I think it should actually be normal
Given that so few people can explain something, yes. The problem is that explaining requires a very deep understanding which so few people attain. This Feynman story sums it up perfectly[1]:
Once, I [David Goodstein] said to him, "Dick, explain to me, so that I can understand it, why spin one-half particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics." Sizing up his audience perfectly, Feynman said, "I'll prepare a freshman lecture on it." But he came back a few days later to say, "I couldn't do it. I couldn't reduce it to the freshman level. That means we don't really understand it."
[1] https://www.quora.com/What-did-Richard-Feynman-mean-when-he-...
So if you want to say Jobs was 'visionary' in '85, remember he had 6 years of lead time, if all he did was pay attention to what was being said in academia about ubiquitous networks.
The mouse was demo'd in 1968 at the mother by Engelbart. So Again, Jobs was really just doing a good sell job on something we had pretty deep long insight into.
Respect is due, but lets temper it. Standing on the shoulders of giants is for physics. In computer science we stand on each others toes..
My first computer science lecture in 1979 was on digital convergence and my lecturer said there, it was actually to all intents and purposes already over, we were just living through a long tail transition. He put it back to 1962 and telstar, although doubtless you could push back further. So if you want to say Jobs was 'visionary' in '85, remember he had 6 years of lead time, if all he did was pay attention to what…
>Playboy: And in the meantime? >Jobs: The developments will be in making the products more and more portable... maybe the merging of the telephone and the personal computer. Hard to believe this was 1984, it almost sounded like the original iPhone was 20+ years in baking
Hindsight is 20/20 as they say...
1984, pre-internet! Or at least pre WWW and big internet >Playboy: Those are arguments for computers in business and in schools, but what about the home? ... This will change: Computers will be essential in most homes. Playboy: What will change? Jobs: The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stage…
Interesting. This is only 5 years after Jobs’ visit to Xerox PARC, where he would later say he “missed [their developments in] networking” because he was so fascinated by their GUI work.
Then again there is very little detail in the statement, and much of it could already be true with the modems and BBSs of the time.
Hell, a year after this interview LucasArts opened up Habitat for beta testing on Quantum Link. The client side running on C64 no less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game)
As Gibson likes to put it: the future is here, it is just not evenly distributed.
> Jobs: Computers are actually pretty simple. We’re sitting here on a bench in this café [for this part of the Interview]. Let’s assume that you understood only the most rudimentary of directions and you asked how to find the rest room. I would have to describe it to you in very specific and precise instructions. I might say, “Scoot sideways two meters off the bench. Stand erect. Lift left foot. Bend left knee until…
Jobs wasn't Woz level, but he was no fool either.
(Also, previous postings from 2010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4619869 and 2012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4619869 with a single comment each.)
1984, pre-internet! Or at least pre WWW and big internet >Playboy: Those are arguments for computers in business and in schools, but what about the home? ... This will change: Computers will be essential in most homes. Playboy: What will change? Jobs: The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stage…
> reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. It's difficult to avoid the comparison with Bill Gate's book "the road ahead" published a decade later, that first neglected and then had to be revised in hardback edition to include the internet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead_(Bill_Gates_boo...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I once had a job interview that had a task where only one person was allowed to view an object made of random Lego bricks, they would communicate the structure to another person, that person would communicate it to a builder. The idea being to replicate the object. It's not easy.
XYZ coords done.
1. You need to specify an “origin” which is (0,0).
This is hard because there is more than one good choice (base or top of a brick?), the structure base may be more than a single brick wide, and you still need an orientation for the base bricks relative to the table, since if they’re at an angle, it isn’t the same.
2. This fails, or at least complicates, on structures that are not fully connected, like 2 towers next to each other. XYZ doesn’t have tools for two towers, rotated, at an angle not parallel to the table.
3. You’re fucked on units if there are any “small” half bricks in the structure, which are common in lego sets.
4. It’s not human optimized. If you forget the origin (easy in a big structure, you fail.
It’s not a bad idea, for some forms of the problem, but this underconsideration is why explaining things is hard.