Woz

Wozniac is currently presenting in the atrium of the UW computer science building.

I don't really have anything to say about this other than the fact he is a giant, giant nerd. It's clear why Jobs was the public face of Apple. And in all these years, it's clear he's only acquired a marginal amount more of social aptitude.

In his defense, I think he comes from a different world. The beginning of personal computers was created by serious, hardcore nerds playing with circuits, and they were driven by competitive engineer egos. These were people in basements soldering hardware, and it kind of explains where the loner, social outcast nerd culture came from.

I respect that, but I also feel that that same culture that generated PC innovation is now the biggest impediment to progress. We now live in a world where performance is no longer the most important aspect of computing; it's usability and reliability. It's much more important that your computer work reliably and do what you want it to than it is that it do it as fast as humanly possible. Similarly, we now live in a ubiquitously connected world. The most important use of computers is in connecting people and enabling cooperative task accomplishment. Designing those systems involves much more understanding of _people_ than designing the Apple II did.

I admire and respect what people like Woz did to create the discipline I now work in, but I don't want the next generation of engineers to follow the same model of development.