[Ailist] Re: Steve jobs and AI? Another perspective
Deborah Howard
debhoward at guidingchange.org
Sat Mar 8 09:37:52 MST 2008
Cheri and Jerry,
You both bring to light the importance of having the whole story
instead of making up stories based on the little bit of information
we have. I wrote a post in my blog recently about just that - and
the difference between telling our own stories and telling stories
about others:
http://guidingchange.org/blog/2008/01/28/stories-about-ourselves-and-
stories-about-others/#more-41
Peace and Joy,
Deb
Guiding Transformative Change Through Insight, Inspiration and
Empowerment
Deborah Howard
Author of Repairing the Quilt of Humanity: A Metaphor for Healing and
Reparation (Available on Amazon)
Founder, Guiding Change Consulting
Publisher, Guiding Change, the Blog
debhoward at guidingchange.org
www.guidingchange.org
http://guidingchange.org/blog
(718) 857-6830
On Mar 7, 2008, at 11:15 PM, Cheri Torres wrote:
> Jerry,
>
> Thank you for sharing this. This entire discussion has reminded me
> of how
> quick we/I are/am to assess the whole person with only a fragment
> of their
> story--and no doubt our greatest err in this is when we do this to
> ourselves.
>
> Imagine the possibilities of what we might do together in the world
> if we
> were always and instantly forgiving ourselves and one another when our
> assessment is "less than perfect" ...
>
> Cheri
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ailist-bounces at lists.business.utah.edu
> [mailto:ailist-bounces at lists.business.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Jerry
> M. Kaiser
> Sent: Friday, March 07, 2008 6:16 PM
> To: ailist at lists.business.utah.edu
> Subject: [Ailist] Re: Steve jobs and AI? Another perspective
>
> Friends:
>
> Rather than add to the PC v. Mac debate (I've used both, and prefer
> Macs),
> I'd like to offer some perspective to what may be a discordant note
> in our
> AI world.
>
> It may be that Steve Jobs is a bully; it may be that, like Thomas
> Edison and
> so many other inventors/innovators/entrepreneurs, he knocks down
> the walls
> of preconceived notions in order to change the paradigm. I don't
> know; I've
> never met the guy.
>
> It also may be that the following is B.S., or a warm and fuzzy talk
> given by
> an insincere person (as happens frequently, especially in these
> days of
> political campaigns). I don't know. But it may say something to me
> about
> where a person comes from and how it may shape who he is.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Jerry
>
> Jerry M. Kaiser
> CaringMatters
> 455 Huckleberry Lane, Boulder Creek, CA 95006
>
> 831-338-3165
> http://www.caringmatters.com
> http://caringmatters.blogspot.com/
>
> "He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope."
> Samuel Taylor Coleridge
>
> ----
> 'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
>
> This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of
> Apple
> Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
>
> I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the
> finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college.
> Truth be
> told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.
> Today I
> want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big
> deal. Just
> three stories.
>
> The first story is about connecting the dots.
>
> I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then
> stayed
> around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really
> quit. So why
> did I drop out?
>
> It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed
> college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for
> adoption. She
> felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so
> everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer
> and his
> wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute
> that
> they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting
> list, got a
> call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby
> boy; do
> you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later
> found out
> that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father
> had never
> graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption
> papers.
> She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that
> I would
> someday go to college.
>
> And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a
> college that
> was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class
> parents'
> savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I
> couldn't
> see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life
> and no
> idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was
> spending
> all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I
> decided to
> drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty
> scary at the
> time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever
> made. The
> minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that
> didn't
> interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked
> interesting.
>
> It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on
> the floor
> in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to
> buy food
> with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night
> to get one
> good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much
> of what I
> stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be
> priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
>
> Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy
> instruction
> in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on
> every
> drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped
> out and
> didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a
> calligraphy
> class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif
> typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter
> combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was
> beautiful,
> historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't
> capture, and I
> found it fascinating.
>
> None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my
> life. But
> ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh
> computer, it all
> came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first
> computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on
> that single
> course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or
> proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac,
> its
> likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never
> dropped
> out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and
> personal
> computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of
> course it
> was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in
> college.
> But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
>
> Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only
> connect them
> looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow
> connect
> in your future. You have to trust in something ‹ your gut, destiny,
> life,
> karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has
> made all
> the difference in my life.
>
> My second story is about love and loss.
>
> I was lucky ‹ I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I
> started
> Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10
> years
> Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion
> company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest
> creation ‹
> the Macintosh ‹ a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then
> I got
> fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as
> Apple grew
> we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company
> with me,
> and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions
> of the
> future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When
> we did,
> our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very
> publicly
> out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and
> it was
> devastating.
>
> I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had
> let the
> previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the
> baton as
> it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce
> and tried
> to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure,
> and I
> even thought about running away from the valley. But something
> slowly began
> to dawn on me ‹ I still loved what I did. The turn of events at
> Apple had
> not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in
> love. And
> so I decided to start over.
>
> I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from
> Apple was
> the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness
> of being
> successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again,
> less
> sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most
> creative periods
> of my life.
>
> During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another
> company
> named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would
> become my
> wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated
> feature
> film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in
> the
> world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I
> returned to
> Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of
> Apple's
> current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family
> together.
>
> I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been
> fired from
> Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient
> needed it.
> Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.
> I'm
> convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved
> what I
> did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your
> work as
> it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of
> your life,
> and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is
> great
> work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you
> haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all
> matters of the
> heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great
> relationship, it
> just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking
> until you
> find it. Don't settle.
>
> My third story is about death.
>
> When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you
> live each
> day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be
> right." It made
> an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have
> looked in
> the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last
> day of my
> life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever
> the
> answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to
> change
> something.
>
> Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've
> ever
> encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost
> everything ‹ all external expectations, all pride, all fear of
> embarrassment
> or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death,
> leaving only
> what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is
> the best
> way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to
> lose. You are
> already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
>
> About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30
> in the
> morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't
> even know
> what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly
> a type of
> cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no
> longer than
> three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my
> affairs in
> order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try
> to tell
> your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to
> tell them
> in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned
> up so
> that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to
> say your
> goodbyes.
>
> I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a
> biopsy,
> where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach
> and into my
> intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the
> tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when
> they
> viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying
> because it
> turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is
> curable with
> surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
>
> This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the
> closest I
> get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say
> this to
> you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely
> intellectual concept:
>
> No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't
> want to die
> to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one
> has ever
> escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very
> likely the
> single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears
> out the
> old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday
> not too
> long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared
> away. Sorry
> to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
>
> Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.
> Don't be
> trapped by dogma ‹ which is living with the results of other people's
> thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your
> own inner
> voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and
> intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
> Everything else is secondary.
>
> When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole
> Earth
> Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was
> created by a
> fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he
> brought
> it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before
> personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with
> typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like
> Google in
> paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was
> idealistic, and
> overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
>
> Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth
> Catalog, and
> then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was
> the
> mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final
> issue was a
> photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find
> yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were
> the
> words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message
> as they
> signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished
> that for
> myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
>
> Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
>
> Thank you all very much.
> --
> Jerry M. Kaiser
> CaringMatters
> 455 Huckleberry Lane, Boulder Creek, CA 95006
>
> 831-338-3165
> http://www.caringmatters.com
> http://caringmatters.blogspot.com/
>
> "He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope."
> Samuel Taylor Coleridge
>
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