Heading into the 50th anniversary of Apple (on April 1st), co-founder Steve Wozniak (aka Woz) has been on a bit of the media circuit to give his thoughts on that past, while also being asked about the current and future of technology.
Woz still has that same youthful “full of wonder” personality when it comes to speaking about engineering which makes him a joy to talk to. He’s also like me, a realist (doesn’t enjoy “blowing smoke up peoples ass” which I believe is a problem with much of todays tech when it come to overhyping certain technology). I met him once over 20 years ago when I was still living in Santa Clara (he’s just a great overall person).
Part of this interview was funny because for us tech folks who were involved and understand the early stuff including the networking with ARPAnet that he was talking about (while the host had that look on her face of “what is he talking about”), this is Woz in a nutshell. One minute, he can make something sound so humanly approachable to understand, but then he’ll amp it up a little when he gets excited about these small details that only other nerds would find fascinating (I could probably talk with him for hours if that was even possible).
He also gives a lot of his opinions from that humanistic point of view (and like many of us, occasionally gets some stuff wrong). It’s a 12 minute rapid fire interview where he also gives his take on AI (not much different than mine) but I’m glad Liz Clayman brought up the 1983 US Festival which he organized and funded (this open air festival included the use of technology that is now commonly used for many live productions). He introduced one of my favorite rock bands, Triumph.
Finally, Woz also touched on todays business models (where a lot of software is now subscription based services aka “SaaS” or software as a service ; similarly, many games have turned into “GaaS” or games as a service where most of the logic for even genres that are normally single player, is running on a server – I touch on some of that here since I am a proponent of game preservation). Myself, if a piece of paid software doesn’t have a “lifetime” licensing mechanism, I’ll usually find something else that does.
Overall, it was a great but way too short interview (it’s too bad he had a prior speaking engagement and couldn’t attend David Pogue’s event at the Computer History Museum a few weeks ago because that would’ve been the perfect setting for him to speak about a lot of this in more detail).
Note: I don’t watch financial cable broadcasts (mainly because I “cut the cable cord” years ago) like CNBC and never did watch FOX Business since it is aligned with Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp (which is known for promoting certain types of propaganda on its properties). I made an exception for this interview since Clayman thankfully just lets Woz go (it’s nice to not see financial agendas and politics getting into any of this).
