What drove Steve Jobs?

In 1995 in the Lost Interview, Steve Jobs said that an article in Scientific American sparked his passion for building tools for humanity:

I read an article when I was very young, in Scientific American, and in it researchers measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on Earth. So, you know, bears, chimpanzees, racoons, fish…and humans were measured too.

How many kilocalories per kilometer did they spend to move?

The condor won. It was the most efficient. And mankind, the crown of creation, came with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list. But someone there had the brilliance of measuring a human riding a bicycle. Blew away the condor. All the way up the charts.

And I remember that this really had an impact on me. Humans are tool builders, and we build tools that can dramatically amplify our innate human abilities.

That’s why we ran an ad in the early days at Apple: the personal computer was the bicycle of the mind. I believe that with every bone in my body. The computer will, as history unfolds and we look back, rank at the top among all human inventions.

Despite this, people still doubt the value of science and science magazines. 

The importance of death

On a day when the world mourns the death of a visionary, I ponder about the words that he left behind:

For the past 33 years, everyday in the morning I’ve looked in the mirror and I’ve asked myself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” and whenever the answer has been ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.