Watch: Apple CEO Steve Jobs predicts the future – in 1983
“By 1986 people are going to be spending more time interacting with computers than they do with their cars,” said Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs during a lecture in 1983.
He was speaking way before the digital transformation of everything in a clip that was today made available with an introduction from Apple’s former designer, Jony Ive at the Steve Jobs Archive.
The Archive has also made a series of other very rare and unique clips available.
It’s all about the context
He spoke forty years ago, in the really early days of the Mac – Apple introduced the Lisa, one of the first commercially available PCs with a mouse and GUI the following day.
“I find it breathtaking how profound his understanding was of the dramatic changes that were about to happen as the computer became broadly accessible,” writes Jony Ive in his introduction.
“He truly believed that by making something useful, empowering, and beautiful, we express our love for humanity,” he said.
The Steve Jobs Archive has the introduction and a lot of insight into what was happening during Jobs’ speech that day.
He knew that PCs were the future, knew that he was going to introduce a brand new computer the following day, and also knew that only a tiny number of the talented designers he was speaking to that day had seen a computer, let alone used one – which is why his claim about the time people would spend using them was so ahead of its time.
Getting the message across
“An internal Apple document cautions that many people encountering a computer for the first time “might be a little bit afraid. They still aren’t sure they can actually operate a computer, but know it’s time they join the ‘revolution’,” the Archive said
When he spoke, Steve was searching for converts, and was searching for help on a mission to create beautiful computers that embodied the technology in ways that made them feel more human. “We have a chance to communicate something through the design of the objects themselves,” he said.
The Ive-introduced report goes a whole deal further to explain what motivated Jobs at that time. He also describes an augmented future when he talks about how one day we may be able to just ask a computer “what would Aristotle have said?” and get a response. (He must have been thrilled when he came across Siri, years later).
It’s all good stuff, so if you want to get a handle on Apple’s history it’s worth taking a moment to visit the archive here – and don’t forget to download the free book the archive makes available.
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