Stacking Fault

Woz' Words of Wizdom

So I just picked up a copy of "iWoz : How I invented the personal computer, co-founded Apple, and had fun doing it" [*] from the local book store, and there were a couple of lines that really "resonated" with me, so I figured I would post them here. The book itself is a non-pretentious romp through Woz' life, talking about events, projects, people, etc. The major thing I noticed, especially after taking some business courses, is that by all "business logic" Steve Wozniak should have turned out to be a Senior Engineer at Hewlett-Packard, perhaps getting ready for retirement.

Why would I say such an irreverent thing about such a Cult Icon? Well... it's no slam on Steve, it's more of a comment on how business logic is a bit screwy. I've heard Woz talk at a couple of events, and being around the valley for a while, I know a couple early Apple employees. After reading the first half of the book, talking with people who know the man, and from the little bits of personality that shine through in his personal appearances, I think I can say with some authority...

There's not a single "business" bone in the man's body.

Okay... it sounds like a criticism, but it's not. Note that the word "business" was in quotes. I'm not saying the guy can't run a business. What I am saying is he's got a view into a different world, where business seems to serve more than just the bottom line, but serves people too. Maybe a better way of putting it...

There's not a single "business as usual" bone in the man's body.

Let me explain... In business school, one of the things that's drilled into you is, "express your social responsibility via ruthless pursuit of profit." To be sure, we're getting a lot of talk about ethics and social responsibility, but teaching the practice of ethical behavior and social responsibility is not something that business schools are setup to do. Teaching how to create and document a business plan? Yup. They got that down. How to decide what's a capital good and decide whether you should buy or lease such a good? Yup. Got that too. But when it comes to acting "good" in every-day situations... well... that's the kind of thing you don't get from a book. My experience with business ethics tell me that there are a number of intuitive factors involved. Many times you don't know you're in an ethical dilemma until you're really in the thick of things.

So given that we're pumping out MBA's who are trained to look almost exclusively at the bottom line, it's remarkable that Wozniak and Jobs could found such a successful company. If you were around in the mid- to late- 1970's, you know there were any number of other firms out there too... MITS, Cromemco, SAGE, Atari, Commodore, Coleco, Mattel and Texas Instruments to name a few. Many of these companies were, from the standpoint of traditional business analysts, run much better than Apple. I think if you had a business student from Harvard visit Apple and Commodore in 1978, they would have recognized Jack Tramiel's "Business is War" mentality and say... "okay... this Tramiel guy's got it going on, but those Apple freaks are out in left field, they'll be dead by 1980."

The reason Apple went on to do innovative new things and Commodore hit the skids in the mid-80's was simple. Computers changed things; to survive, businesses needed to "play nice" and build communities of knowledge-workers around their products. Apple grokked this concept instinctually, Commodore didn't. Apple's co-founders were just new-agey enough to think they shouldn't be out trying to screw people to make a higher percentage. If Tramiel had been in the steel business or the auto industry or even the airlines, his "business is war" mentality would have served him well.

Building computers is a little like building any other type of widget; you definitely have to keep track of the balance sheet and you need good will from your investors. But they're also different. Personal computers changed markets and the way people work. They changed lives and they changed businesses. Personal or home computers or whatever you want to call them were, like early automobiles and the mobile phone, a disruptive technology. And that's something that you don't talk about a lot at business school. It's so far outside the day to day operational experience of the typical firm that it's just not even mentioned. 99.998% of MBA's coming out of our schools today won't be in the position to found companies that specialize in disruptive technology, so you might as well focus on the traditional stuff.

And that's not completely a bad idea.

Until you come to a point when everyone is so focused on the incremental improvements in the 99.998% of the market that they fail to invest in that .002% that's literally going to change the world.

Apple shouldn't have been a success. Given Jobs' much ballyhooed megalomania and Woz' departure from "business as usual" the company should have gone down in flames. But it's the canonical example of the perfect storm of the right people (people who have an almost cultish rejection of the status quo) meeting the right idea at the time when the world was changing. In Apple's case, a machine with superior price/performance characteristics with Dan Bricklin's VisiCalc opened up people's minds that there was a new, more efficient way people could run their businesses.

At the same time, computers from Commodore, Atari, Tandy, Texas Instruments, Coleco and Sinclare were changing people's lives at home. Kids were learning LOGO on home computers. A lucky few had modems and the BBS culture foresaw the social aspects of the Internet as we know it today. Many of the better software engineers I know today were introduced to the concept of writing software by TRS-80's, Apple ]['s or (in my case) the TI 99/4. But Apple's early wins in the corporate arena gave them the retained earnings to develop innovative next-generation systems such as the Lisa and ultimately the Macintosh.

But getting back to Woz' quotes... For my money, the quote on page 16 sort of summarizes it. Woz is talking about the values he learned from his dad:

"I clearly remember him telling me that engineering was the highest level of importance you could reach in the world, that someone who could make electrical devices that do something good for people takes society to a new level. He told me that as an engineer, you can change your world and change the way of life for lots and lots of people."

When I was 11 years old, we were moving my grandmother from Rantoul, Illinois closer to our home in Texas. Knowing that I was interested in computers, my dad called some of his old Air Force contacts and convinced them to give me a tour of some of the computing facilities at UIUC (Urbana Champaign). Now this was about two months after I had first seen the TRS-80 in the Radio Shack store in 1978, so I had a pretty bizarre idea of computers. They were either really big things that helped Spock analyze M Class planets, or they were clunky little things that played checkers. At UIUC, I was introduced to the Plato system. If you're unfamiliar with Plato... well... a lot of things we take for granted can be traced back to Plato: multimedia presentations, news groups and online forums and even email. At UIUC, Plato terminals spread across the campus allowed students to get updated postings on events as well as sending and receiving private electronic messages.

In short, computers were changing the way people did things.

Later in the 1980's my mother took me to a "computers in education" conference in North Texas. Some guy with a grey beard spoke about how children model problems and how to use computers and robots to build their problem solving skills. It was a little bit dry, but even at age 13 I was fascinated. Computers could be used to teach people things... Hmm... (The guy with the grey beard was, of course, Seymour Papert. And if you haven't read Mindstorms, you're really missing out.)

Texas Instruments later sponsored a seminar on "computers for the disabled." My uncle was in charge of some educational programs at TI, so my mom and I were able to slip in the back door and hear people talk. This is the one thing that blew my young mind. When I walked in, I noticed a lot of people with handicaps. In wheelchairs, with canes and with crutches. But what I saw while I was there was how these people were using technology to improve their interaction with the world around them. I had thougt that the handicapped were remaining silent because they had nothing to say. But here they were talking and interacting and well... having a good time. I learned that day that people with disabilities are people, not frightening avatars of mortality and fate. Technology was transforming "disabled" into "differently abled." It's a subtle difference, and I know it sounds a little politically correct, but there is something to the distinction. When I walked in the conference, "handicapped" people were poor souls with insurmountable problems. By the time I walked out, my view of the world had changed... Seeing people with disabilities overcome obstacles to communication and social participation, and do it with a surprising degree of skill made me realize that given half a chance and $100 of electronics, many handicaps disappear.

So that's my testimony. Technology is about changing people's lives: lives of the differently or dis-abled, lives of learners, and lives of adults. This is what shines through in Woz' memoir: Engineers build things to change people's lives.

Tags: woz, apple, accessibility

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* - I should probably point out that iWoz is written by Steve Wozniak and Gina Smith. Is this the same Gina Smith who worked at Wheels of Zeus?

posted by Matthew S. Hamrick @ 10:31 AM