Reminds me of Jobs and Wozniak. Jobs was a toxic jerk who was very good at taking credit for the genius of Wozniak and others. Jobs had some brains and talent, but he was mostly just a whip cracker and ruthless self promoter. His pedestal has always annoyed me. Musk is similar and probably worse.
One of the many truths we’ve really learned over the past few years is that it’s easier to con someone than it is to convince them they’ve been conned. In fact, it’s easier to keep conning them, over and over, than it is to convince them they’ve been conned. That’s what Musk does. That’s what Trump does. They also benefit from the tendency of people to believe there’s a close association between material success and ability, or success and intelligence, or success and moral standing. It’s a modernized version of the divine right of kings.
I don’t think the analogy to Jobs is great though. I never knew Jobs, but I know several people who knew him and worked with him. The consensus opinion among them seems to be that Jobs had a dysfunction like a lot of people in the industry do. He had poor control over a relatively short temper. He was also aware of it and worked to overcome it, but like we know about people with cognitive dysfunctions, it’s not something you can just will your way out of. We depend on our brains to tell us when something is going wrong, and so when the brain is the thing that’s going wrong, it can be pretty bad at that job.
What Jobs did have was an intuitive grasp of the relationship between a person and technology. He saw that there was more to it than a beige box that people worked or played on. He saw a way of creating an impression of a personal connection between a person and a personalizable but inanimate object in a way that few people have achieved before or since. Yes, Jobs could be a whole bag of dicks, but from all accounts that’s when he was at his least effective.
But at the end of the day, before Jobs was hired back as CEO to rescue Apple, things had gone to shit because they had started to think of themselves as just a computer manufacturer. There was no vision for an iMac, an iPod, or an iPhone. He got it wrong sometimes, too. The Lisa was as big a disaster as the Edsel. Ping was a disaster. The original Maps was a disaster. The job of the CEO - Jobs’ job if you will - is to provide vision and direction, and to get it right.
That wasn’t what Woz was good at. He is intelligent and a creative thinker. He is a tinkerer and a hacker. He can be a bit of a tech bro, but he has a genuine love for technology and understanding. I hope he fully recovers from his recent minor stroke and that they can take measures to prevent any sequelae.
That was longer than I intended. The short version is that Jobs was more like Miranda Priestly from the Devil Wears Prada and Musk is more like Michael Scott would be if he had a couple of hundred billion dollars but lacked the moral framework that made his character likable.
I appreciate the thoughtful reply. I’m not saying Jobs deserves zero credit. Woz himself respected the man, so who am I to disagree. As you pointed out, he had some visionary traits. I just think he’s highly overrated, and his contributions, while significant, could have been provided by many others. He just wasn’t the magic unicorn he was lauded as, IMO.
Comparing Musk to a billionaire Michael Scott is gold. And I agree with the point that Jobs was smart and Musk is a dumbass.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Reminds me of Jobs and Wozniak. Jobs was a toxic jerk who was very good at taking credit for the genius of Wozniak and others. Jobs had some brains and talent, but he was mostly just a whip cracker and ruthless self promoter. His pedestal has always annoyed me. Musk is similar and probably worse.
Definitely worse. Jobs is dead, Musk is not.
One of the many truths we’ve really learned over the past few years is that it’s easier to con someone than it is to convince them they’ve been conned. In fact, it’s easier to keep conning them, over and over, than it is to convince them they’ve been conned. That’s what Musk does. That’s what Trump does. They also benefit from the tendency of people to believe there’s a close association between material success and ability, or success and intelligence, or success and moral standing. It’s a modernized version of the divine right of kings.
I don’t think the analogy to Jobs is great though. I never knew Jobs, but I know several people who knew him and worked with him. The consensus opinion among them seems to be that Jobs had a dysfunction like a lot of people in the industry do. He had poor control over a relatively short temper. He was also aware of it and worked to overcome it, but like we know about people with cognitive dysfunctions, it’s not something you can just will your way out of. We depend on our brains to tell us when something is going wrong, and so when the brain is the thing that’s going wrong, it can be pretty bad at that job.
What Jobs did have was an intuitive grasp of the relationship between a person and technology. He saw that there was more to it than a beige box that people worked or played on. He saw a way of creating an impression of a personal connection between a person and a personalizable but inanimate object in a way that few people have achieved before or since. Yes, Jobs could be a whole bag of dicks, but from all accounts that’s when he was at his least effective.
But at the end of the day, before Jobs was hired back as CEO to rescue Apple, things had gone to shit because they had started to think of themselves as just a computer manufacturer. There was no vision for an iMac, an iPod, or an iPhone. He got it wrong sometimes, too. The Lisa was as big a disaster as the Edsel. Ping was a disaster. The original Maps was a disaster. The job of the CEO - Jobs’ job if you will - is to provide vision and direction, and to get it right.
That wasn’t what Woz was good at. He is intelligent and a creative thinker. He is a tinkerer and a hacker. He can be a bit of a tech bro, but he has a genuine love for technology and understanding. I hope he fully recovers from his recent minor stroke and that they can take measures to prevent any sequelae.
That was longer than I intended. The short version is that Jobs was more like Miranda Priestly from the Devil Wears Prada and Musk is more like Michael Scott would be if he had a couple of hundred billion dollars but lacked the moral framework that made his character likable.
I appreciate the thoughtful reply. I’m not saying Jobs deserves zero credit. Woz himself respected the man, so who am I to disagree. As you pointed out, he had some visionary traits. I just think he’s highly overrated, and his contributions, while significant, could have been provided by many others. He just wasn’t the magic unicorn he was lauded as, IMO.
Comparing Musk to a billionaire Michael Scott is gold. And I agree with the point that Jobs was smart and Musk is a dumbass.
Now if only there was a shred of regard for rajadharma to go along with it… :(
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Jobs’ biggest sin in terms of the public was charging too much for Apple products. Musk has done a lot worse.