On 'Getting' Steve Jobs and Chicago Days

Newsletter 15: 8/25/2023 - 9/1/2023

Table of Contents

1. On Building Like Steve Jobs

2. Digital Nomad Journal Update

On Building Like Steve Jobs

What was Steve Jobs really like? I believe that few really grasp him. The main thing to get about Jobs is that he really cared about making an impact, a ‘dent’ in the universe, and what this meant is to do something good for people, to love and care for people.

How did he love and care for people? This is by being at the place and time where computers were suddenly going to become available to everyone. If not for him, the world would be a much more darker place. We would not have the beautiful and effective computers that we all use all day every day. They would have been only used by specialists, technicians, scientist, and not by artists, makers, builders, musicians, writers and other humanists.

Few could really understand what a computer was, what was it’s meaning? Most thought of it as a big gray box with flashing lights and spinning tape deck. It could be used for calculations by scientists. What use would it be to an average person? To most people a computer was a foreign, incomprehensible thing, something that is used by some specialists in scientific fields.

Steve Jobs was first exposed to a computer at the age of 10, while visiting AMES research center in Palo Alto. It was a console, that was connected to a computer at the other end of the wire. Then in his teenage years, he was able to travel there on weekdays and weekend nights to use the computer. There he learned programming, wrote programs and played games, spending countless hours of long evenings. He was one of the first people to be exposed to programming at an early age, as a teenager. After him, there is a long history of people that changed the world, who learned programming at an early age. Programming is a super power. This experience informed his decisions later in college and life. The power of learning to ‘think’ through programming, shifted his life trajectory.

Steve Jobs recognized that computers are a bicycle for the mind, at a time when most people did not really see the use for computers.

What does it mean, a bicycle for the mind? How are computers really giving us ‘superpowers’? It is not easy to explain or to capture. In some interviews Steve Jobs does a great job. He describes programs like big machines, like say a car. Except that the moving parts, the engine, the steering wheel, are all invisible, they are electrons moving around according to dead simple instructions. For example, move this number there, add this number to this number, check if this number is equal to zero. These instructions are made at extremely fast speeds, and the end result is that it allows for the creation of incredibly complex machinery of logic. Much like giant machines of complexity, cranes performing some work construction materials closer to the work site, or a car engine getting us around the city, these logical machines perform work of logic, that then give us graphics, games, and software applications. They open a world of possibility for creating what ever we imagine. Then we had the internet revolution, first predicted by Jobs and built on top of his computer, the Next Workstation by Tim Burners Lee at CERN Laboratory. This then unlocked new levels of possibilities for industries to emerge. Then the mobile revolution happened, again first imagined and pushed into being by Jobs with the invention of the iPhone.

There is something magical that happens when a person is able to spend hours at a computer, playing some game, or writing some code, the computer becomes an extension of their minds, and the human computer symbiosis predicted by J.C.R Licklider, the early computer pioneer at DARPA, happens and then mere mortals enter new worlds.

Yes it is important to observe there are dangers. As with any technology it is a double edge sword; it can be used for good or evil, it can be a tool of harm to self or others. Without proper appreciation of it’s power, interaction with computers is not nearly as fruitful as it can be.

There are so many nuggets of gold in interviews with Jobs. For example when he observes that the Da Vinci’s and Michaelangelos of our times are programmers expressing themselves through art of code.

Steve Jobs is by far, by a huge margin, the sole person that made the personal computing industry what it is today. He was there at it’s beginning, when most did not recognize what computers were for, what computers are, and what significance they have in our lives. Even today, 50 years after the first personal computer, we do not really talk about what computers are, what they have done for us in changing the world. Few people really are aware of what the power of learning to code and use computers the their fullest potential is. We are still by and large a humanity that is ignorant about what computers are. Steve Jobs was nearly the only human on Earth to recognize the power that they can give us and to build on top of it. To build a business on top of this conception. Now, today in 2023, still we have very very very few people that understand the meaning of Steve Jobs life and his work. Very few people recognize the power of computing.

Now we have Ai that actually is super human. Most programmers in 2023 have started using chatGPT daily in their work, using it as a genius senior programmer, that holds their hand through the most difficult programming questions and problem solving tasks.

There is immense opportunity out there for those that know what the meaning of computing is on humanity, those that know how to write code, those that see the real world and not the matrix. In many ways, the film The Matrix, is like about a programmer, that truly learns how to think, and frees himself from illusions, in which most humans are trapped. This ‘Neo’ character type, is like a Steve Jobs. This character is a programmer, that has learned how to think and can bend reality.

Digital Nomad Journal Update

This week I have been living in Chicago. In a Northwest side neighborhood called Jefferson Park. My parents live here. I used to live here in an apartment near the train station. It is a charming, quiet, historic Chicago neighborhood. Historically it has had concentration of Polish, German, Irish and many other ethnic immigrants.

I love it for it’s beautiful park, it’s charming cafe called ‘Westons’, in which I spent many Weekends coding and reading and dreaming about making the world a better place one day. There is a nice library. A major highway that connects O’Hare airport with downtown runs through it. It also has a Metra train station and the CTA Blue line station.

On Thursday I organized a ‘code and coffee’ meetup through the ‘Chicago Tech Slack’ a community of people in technology. It was great to learn what local coders are working on. Actually two people worked at the same company I used to work at, in the Sears Tower. We didn’t work there at the same time but we had many common acquaintances and points of reference. We all had a good time, did some networking and at the same time balanced it with being productive.

Chicago downtown is immense and it has beautiful and impressive architecture. The worlds first skyscrapers were built here. The river walk is breathtaking with it’s views. I walked through here to get to Coding meetups and to cowork with a friend at the 1871 startup incubator.

On Sunday I went on a long 10 plus mile hike through the Caldwell woods, just North of Jefferson Park. I often used to go running and walking here in my early to late twenties and I would ponder life and major life decisions. Here I was doing the same, several years later, like a dog that visits his old grounds (this is like a quote from a Belle and Sebastian song lol).

This is a great way to do some deep thinking, reflections, and to get some distance and perspective on your life. I imagine being 85 years old and making the same walk, reflecting on what a full life I have lived (hopefully!!!).

At this creek I sat and paused my hike. I reflected on the fact that only now, on this day, does being an entrepreneur make sense to me. Finally my life purpose clicked for me. I would create software to make Ai interactions easier for people to use. I would commit all my time and effort to this path. I would take this seriously, the life of a business owner. Working full-time at companies felt like it was killing my soul. It suddenly made sense that I felt internally a deep calling to be an entrepreneur. The same as Steve Jobs and countless other programmers turned founders.