Steve Jobs on Computers as a Medium
What Jobs talks about
Jobs says the best people he worked with did not use computers for their own sake. They were drawn to computers because they were the best medium for expressing something they wanted to share with other people.
He compares that impulse to people who want to be poets instead of bankers: a creative drive that can be put into products. For Jobs, good products can carry that spirit, and users can sense it.
He points to the Macintosh as an example, saying people loved it in a way you do not often hear about products. The passage frames computers as a humanistic medium, not just a technical tool.
Jobs speaks throughout; an interviewer prompts him with brief questions.
In his words
“That same spirit can be put into products”
“And if you talk to people that use the Macintosh, they love it.”
“You could feel it in there.”
“Computers are the medium that is best capable of transmitting some feeling that you have that you wanna share with other people.”
Key points
- Some people are drawn to computers the way others are drawn to poetry or art.
- The best products can transmit feeling, not just function.
- Macintosh users could sense something wonderful in the product.
- Many strong people in computing were motivated by expression, not just technology.
- Computers became the medium they could use to say something to others.
Full transcript
And it's it's the same thing that causes people to wanna be poets instead of bankers. You know? And and I think that's a wonderful thing. And I think that that same spirit can be put into products. And those products can be manufactured and given to people, and they can sense that spirit. And if you talk to people that use the Macintosh, they love it. And you don't hear people loving thing... Products very often, you know, really. But but you could feel it in there. There was something really wonderful there. So I I don't think that most of the really best people that I've worked with have worked with computers for the sake of working with computers.
They work with computers because they are the medium that is best capable of transmitting some feeling that you have that you wanna share with other people. Does that make any sense to you? Yeah. And, you know, before they invented these things, all these people would have done other other things. But but they... But computers were invented. They did come along, and all these people did get interested in in school or before school. And and and and said, hey, this is the medium that I think I can say something in. Mhmm. You know?
Transcribed from the audio by speech recognition (Deepgram). Timestamps link to the video above. Errors are possible.