Steve Jobs on Computer Literacy: The 21st Century Bicycle

Today's computer problem at Cape Canaveral was distressing, perhaps, but for most Americans, not totally surprising. As a society, we've become used to computer problems of one kind or another, just as we've become used to computers. We're so used to them, in fact, that few of us stop to think of the extent to which they now play a role in our everyday lives. A role that shows every sign of growing even bigger. We have two reports. The first, from Bettina Gregory. You can't do the simplest things today without using a computer. You can't cash a personal check. You can't even make a phone call without linking into the telephone company's computer. And if you go to the supermarket, the chances are good a computer will check out your groceries, mechanically assisted by a human being.

In some areas, computers have replaced humankind. In Washington, the subway system is run by computer. True, motormen ride in the cabs, but only as a backup to this computerized service. In the airline industry, computers will reserve your seat on a plane. And make no mistake, when you take off, it's the computers who tell air traffic controllers how to get you safely to your destination. Computers have revolutionized the personal credit card industry. Credit card billing would be a lot harder to do without the computer. And, of course, the computer provides the inevitable excuse for mistakes in your bills. Humans often feel like Don Quixote tilting at windmills when it comes to fighting the almighty computer. Miracles of modern medical diagnosis are made possible by computers. And academic research is more comprehensive.

Computers have had an enormous impact on television journalism. ABC News researchers have millions of hours of film and videotape right at their fingertips. Film with an elephant? There are 223 entries in the ABC News library. An elephant at a circus? We have 20 such entries. But if you want an elephant with a rider, the computer says, we have only one such film. It's a small computer that puts the letters on your television screen. And another one that creates special effects, which were once too expensive and time-consuming to produce before the age of the computer. Since Wall Street started using computers, volume on the big board doubled and redoubled to as much as 70 million shares a day. The government certainly uses computers. When you pay your taxes, IRS computers will audit the returns.

The federal government also uses computers to track down runaway husbands on welfare. And now the Reagan administration wants to cut down the number of welfare cheats by putting a computer cross-check on everyone who gets government help. That's going too far, says the American Civil Liberties Union. But for the most part, computers have become such a way of life that many people believe they don't invade their privacy. That's because in America today, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is inevitably linked to a computer. Bettina Gregory, ABC News, New York. This is Ken Kashiwahara. Personal computers are being welcomed in schools and in businesses and in homes without any mention of invasion of privacy. In fact, assembly lines are literally grinding them out, attempting to keep up with demand.

Personal computers have become popular because of their size and their cost. They are compact because their tiny memory banks are made out of even tinier microchips. A basic unit can be had for as little as $1,500. Schools use the computers not only to teach children, but to teach them about computers. Educators at this junior high school say students are going out into a computer world and should know something about it. Small businesses have latched onto the personal computer boom, using the devices to map out financial plans and to print memos and letters, all at the touch of a button. And the personal computer is beginning to invade the home. In this house, the solar power is controlled and regulated by a computer. Here, the computer is used to entertain.

Video games are programmed and the battle is waged. And Fred Wilkinson says he uses his home computer to store information and to learn. It's a daily event. There isn't a day that goes by that either through a magazine or through the keyboard or through a program or through talking to somebody that I don't pick up more and more information. And it's a growing experience. I know I see that in myself and I see it in other people who I deal with. It started out much the same way I have. The personal computer boom has been a boom to one company in particular. It has become the Big Apple in this land of high technology. Since the Apple Computer Company was founded five years ago, its sales have skyrocketed from about $100,000 to more than $100 million. Stephen Jobs helped build the first Apple computer in his garage.

He is now 26 years old and is chairman of the board. And he sees his computer's future as the future of mankind. This is a 21st century bicycle that amplifies a certain intellectual ability that man has. And I think that after this process has come to maturity, the effects that it's going to have on society are actually going to far outstrip even those that the petrochemical revolution has had. But these computers are not necessarily simply innocent playthings of the future. Some people feel threatened by them. Some think they tend to dehumanize. And others fear they may eventually take over their jobs. This is Ted Aswathara, ABC News San Francisco.

Ah, but at least it still hasn't learned how to say, back to you, Ted. Back to you, Ted. I'll have my computer talk to you in a moment. And in a moment, we'll talk live with the chairman of the Apple Computer Company and with a writer who warns of the dangers that computers pose to society. An example of sort of the role that computers are now playing in our lives in a sense that that computer that malfunctioned was really as critical to the success of the shuttle as the thrust of the boosters that were going to lift it up in the air. And in essence, both the boosters and the computer were really performing the same type of function. Both were amplifying an inherent ability that humans have. In other words, no more could even a small collection of people run the shuttle than they could jump up in the air several thousand feet in the atmosphere.

There is a sense, though, that many of us have who really don't understand how computers work or what they do for us or to us, that we are becoming controlled by the computers. Any danger of that happening? Well, as you know, the product we manufacture, many people see it for the first time and they don't think it's a computer. It's about 12 pounds. You can throw it out the window if the relationship isn't going so well. And I think if you look at sort of the process of the technological revolution that we're all in, it's a process of taking very centralized things and making them very democratic, if you will, very individualized, making them affordable by individuals for a small collection of tasks, if you will, sort of from the passenger train to the Volkswagen. All right, we heard you talking on tape a moment ago about the bicycle of the 21st century. What were you talking about?

Well, actually, I read a survey in Scientific American in the early 70s. And what this survey had done was it measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species of things on the planet, birds, fish, dogs, and it ranked them. And it turned out that the condor won. The condor took the least amount of energy to get from point A to point B. And man sort of came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list. But someone at that magazine had the insight to test the efficiency of man riding a bicycle. And man riding a bicycle was twice as good as the condor, all the way off the end of the list. And it really illustrated man's ability as a toolmaker to fashion a tool to amplify an inherent ability that he has. And that's really exactly what we feel we're doing. We're really sort of blazing the trails for the 21st century bicycle, but to amplify a slightly different inherent ability that man has, the ability of a certain part of intelligence.

Right now, we're at the mechanical part of intelligence, where one of these devices can free a person from many of the drudgeries of life and allow, really, humans to do what they do best, which is to work on the conceptual level, to work on the creative level. All right. David Burnham, you have some concerns about computers. And I guess, in part, they have to do with the invasion of privacy. And they do invade our privacy, do they not? They certainly do. And we have many examples from our history. Mr. Jobs said that the computer amplified the ability of man. That's true. But man, history tells us, has done good things, and he's also done bad things. The Census Bureau, for example, used computerized punch cards to help locate the Japanese-Americans in 1941, when they were all—so many of them were arrested on the West Coast.

All right. I keep borrowing this phrase from the NRA. You know, guns don't kill people. People kill people. Computers don't do that to people. People using computers do that. Isn't a computer, in and of itself, a neutral tool that can be used for good or evil? It is. And men use guns to kill people, and men use guns to hunt animals. The question is, is our society alert enough to understand the power of the computer and to turn it toward the good things? Or are there people and occasions when we use this tool for a bad purpose? Steve Jobs, I realize this is your baby, and you've made a career out of it, but you're also something of a philosopher. Do you see the inherent possibility of bad coming out of all of this?

Well, I think one of the things you really have to look at is you have to go watch some kids using these things. As an example, 97 percent of the high school students who graduate from Minnesota have hands-on experience with these personal computers, learning how to use them. We call this computer literacy. It's probably happening in the elementary schools now. And you go watch kids interact with these computers. And what you find is far from something quite harmful. In effect, what you see is an instantaneous reflection of a part of you. themselves, the creative part of themselves being expressed, and it's just very, very difficult to see these kids using this tool and realizing that they're going to have these tools available for the rest of their lives to portray that as something very harmful. It's actually something quite democratic. All right, but I mean the government, and I think Mr. Burnham was leading us in this direction, the government has the capacity by using computers to get all kinds of information on us that we're really not even aware that they have. Isn't that dangerous? Well, I think the best protection against something like that is a very literate public, and in this case, computer literate, and I think you're actually seeing that happen right now in the personal computer area. Again, computers that people can afford themselves. We've already reached approximately one in every thousand households in the United States, and I think over the next five or six years that figure will be one in ten. Ultimately, it will be one in one, and I think the feeling of computer literacy among the populace is the thing that, for me at least, gives me the most comfort that that centralized intelligence will have the least effect on our lives without us knowing it. Mr. Burnham, are you comforted by that thought that somehow we will all have the capacity to defend ourselves against computers by owning and being able to control computers?

Well, I wonder whether the individual citizen alone is any match, say, for the United States Army when a few years ago it began surveillance programs of hundreds of thousands of people who were lawfully opposed, voicing their opposition to the war in Vietnam. I wonder whether the individual citizen can control the Army or whether the individual citizen can control the Census Bureau if it decides to break the rules and make information available which the citizen has given to it. All right, but on balance, are you for them or against them? I think there's a tremendous danger that the public is not aware of enough at this moment. I think if we are aware that perhaps we can use them for the good things that Mr. Jobs sees in them. All right, computer literacy, you're both in favor of that, and I thank you both very much for being with us.