On the 20th anniversary of Steve Jobs’ profound commencement speech at Stanford University, the Steve Jobs Archive (launched in 2022 by Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell Jobs) re-released an upscaled/enhanced version of the original that is on Stanford’s channel. If there is one of the better uses of machine learning algorithms, it is the ability to enhance older videos in this manner.
What I wrote last year is still applicable today with regards to many of the things Jobs noted in his speech (probably a whole lot more given what is happening in the U.S. 20 years post-commencement speech with its backsliding away from democracy).
But to add on to those prior thoughts, the “connecting the dots” portion of his speech relates to this and my previous blog entries (where I can look back and see what my thought processes were before and how many of them “connected”, providing that “hindsight is 20-20” aspect when you are able to look back and see what you actually got right and what was way off the mark). In retrospect, I never did fully look at my blog postings this way until this year (until I had to go back and fix many of them in order to migrate and merge them).
His 2nd story regarding “finding and doing what you love” has also been an important cornerstone (if you don’t love doing the work that you do, it is hard to be passionate about what is normally a mundane part of your life; one that consumes at least 8 hours of each working day). If on the other hand, you are doing something you enjoy, it really doesn’t feel like work at all (and that time feels like it was time well spent).
Finally, his 3rd story (not being afraid of failure or being trapped by dogma and living someone elses life) was the focus of what I had written about last year (about life being too short to be focused on negativity). This has come into even more focus as we watch some of the most well off people in the world choosing to spend their own short time on this planet doing evil versus being positive role models/doing good in the world.
As each year passes, the wisdom of this entire speech is something that I hope younger generations will be able to take inspiration from in forging their own paths forward (and hoping they choose to eschew going down the negative/destructive path that we see some of the most rich/powerful have chosen in the present timeline).
