WORDS OF WOZ- DOM
Be yourself, tinker, try new things
If your homework is to do problems one to 20, do up to 30. Go online and see if there’s an even better solution to the problem.
It’s a fool’s mission to try to fence in Steve Wozniak. The 64- year- old co- founder of Apple Inc. and inventor of the personal computer isn’t known for following straight lines.
After his breakthrough invention changed how people use technology, he didn’t become the typical tech tycoon, but quit Apple, gave away much of his company stock, and went on to make remote controls and teach Grade 5 students.
He idolizes nerds and engineers, and says schools don’t do enough to encourage independent, creative thinking. So when asked how Montreal, a city with four major universities, several technical schools, and lots of high- tech talent, can become the next Silicon Valley, Wozniak was unequivocal.
“You need to ask yourself, what do you have that makes you special? Not how you can be a different place,” he said to the applause of a Place des Arts audience Monday night during an event organized by the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal.
Silicon Valley, he said, was a fortunate happenstance of successful hardware companies in the same area. Its fame as a cauldron of entrepreneurship and countercultural innovation is recent.
“The desire to search for something newer and better is part of our nature,” he said, and is not limited to geography.
The question about Montreal was one of the few that the Woz — as he’s affectionately known — answered directly. His interviews tend to be used as platforms for him to talk about whatever interests him. Nearly 40 years after his invention, his appearances still draw huge crowds, even though Wozniak says pretty much the same thing every time. But his passion and geeky goofball nature are endearing, and on Monday night he kept four interviewers fascinated.
Here are the highlights from the separate interviews conducted by TV host Pénélope McQuade, serial entrepreneur Alexandre Taillefer, Youth Fusion founder Gabriel Bran Lopez and video- game critic Denis Talbot.
ON THE ORIGINS OF APPLE:
As Wozniak, an engineer at Hewlett- Packard, was sharing his designs for the Apple I with his computer club, Steve Jobs, a broke and unskilled dreamer, was thinking of turning them into money.
But Jobs wasn’t the consummate and perfectionist businessman that his legacy suggests, Wozniak said. The ideas came from Apple’s first investor, Mike Markkula.
“He taught us about marketing, making a product look good, and building a company oriented toward the customer,” Wozniak said. “Steve learned all this from him.”
ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP:
Entrepreneurs with big ideas need to find good science and engineering partners right away, he advised, not when their startup companies do their market launch.
“They are used to solving deep problems and coming up with creative solutions,” he said.
Entrepreneurs also shouldn’t be afraid of taking steps that don’t necessarily make money right away. Time rewards those who like to tinker.
“People who play around, eventually they’ll hit a home run.”
Even though Wozniak is not a businessman — none of his post-Apple ventures really took off — he’s often asked what tech sectors are worth investing in. He said artificial intelligence and natural language recognition are promising, as they seek to make computers more human.
But, he quickly added, “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.” If machines get too powerful, humans risk becoming “the family pet” who have everything taken care of for them.
ON EDUCATION:
Wozniak spent years teaching Grade 5 students, as it was one of his childhood dreams to be a teacher. He wished, however, that he had spent more time educating teachers, especially about new technology. The kids in his classes were completing their assignments on computers, submitting sleek printed pages with fancy cover art. The teachers, he said, had no idea how to evaluate this kind of work, since many were not comfortable with machines.
When asked what advice he could give to encourage kids to stay in school, Wozniak said: Go beyond expectations and you’ll be noticed.
“Try to be better than everyone else. If your homework is to do problems one to 20, do up to 30. Go online and see if there’s an even better solution to the problem.”
Wozniak said schools don’t encourage creativity enough, and the onus is on students to hone theirs.
“Success in school is measured by good grades, and you get good grades by having the right answer on tests. And it’s the same right answer for everyone,” he said.
ON TECHNOLOGY:
When asked again what technologies are worth investing in, Wozniak had a different answer: medical and diagnosis tech, which promise to detect health issues with machines in a way that was dreamed of only in science fiction ( think the Star Trek tricorder).
“Whatever I say, do the opposite,” he joked. “I don’t even know what stock I own.”