a bike for the mind

I've been thinking a lot about Steve and can't offer much more than what has been said already.  It is difficult to convey the energy and nimbleness of mind I felt the few times we talked.  He clearly wasn't an engineer or a manager - those conversations reminded me more of having deep talks with an artist or a composer.

 

I wrote a short piece six weeks ago when he retired that sum up my feelings of why I was attracted to his approach

This morning  some of his comments came to mind.  His "bicycle for the mind" notion of computers is both telling and compelling.  He was struck by an article in Scientific American that examined the energy cost of transportation.  Most people, when they see this sort of information, have their eyes glaze over and get manage to get caught in the particular mode of transport, the sources of energy and various externalities.  Jobs was struck only by the joules/km-kg metric.  He noted humans are not very good as animals go - I think he used the phrase "the crown of creation doesn't fare well" and most personal forms of transit are much worse.  But there was one gem …  when it comes to moving a single organism a person on a bike beats anything else.  We had created an elegantly simple mechanical device that managed to beat evolution.  

He continued to admire bikes as practical design.  I had a conversation with him in 2004 or 2005 where he brought it up as a near perfect embodyment of functional design.  He mentioned Italian track bikes from the 70s as accomplishing their goal with incredible beauty and simplicity, completely integrating a person with their own motion even eliminating the need for brakes.  That was the moment when it became clear to me that he needed to strip away the extraneous of any socio-technical initial solution.  Breadth of intellect and a willingness to ponder deeply and struggle with the issues are critical to this approach.  That is where you begin to recognize there are many pieces to a puzzle and begin to connect the dots.  Real creativity becomes an afterthought as it is obvious.

This is often how creativity happens in science - problems need to be expressed in the greatest simplicity as nature is otherwise too confusing.  Jobs was gifted - and hardworking - enough to take on several monumentally complex problems and render them obvious.  His competitors would look at what he did learning at the superficial Cliffs Notes level and trying to pass the test, but they weren't learning at a deeper level.  They weren't investing their intellectual horsepower or that of their organizations in deep understanding.  They were comparatively inefficient intellectually and lacking in real education.

I have great hopes for Apple going forward as I think he built much of his thinking into the organization.  That is a powerful weapon that isn't terribly secret, but is enormously difficult to duplicate.  

This approach should be core to the educational experience.  Forget about simple training for work as the core focus.  A broad general education is critical.  My own early education was deep in a few places rather than broad and I consider it a handicap.  Over the years I've broadened out a bit, but still have a long way to go.  It is something we can all aspire to and something that needs to be built into the education system.  You need art, music, sports, history, philosophy, literature, poetry, math, science, the ability to observe and think critically and several other things to even see the dots involved.   Then, and only then,  you can begin to connect the dots and hopefully you are in an organization that can appreciate that approach.

 

Peace to his family and close friends, but thank you for underscoring the importance of such a powerful way of thinking.  What an incredible ride.

 

Simplicity is incredibly difficult, but its value is enormous 

and a final note

Comments

[Howard Greenstein]

Well said.

[steve]

I've been hearing the term STEAM lately ... STEM education is science, technology, engineering and math. Add A for the arts and you get STEAM.