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High Point University
Presents Steve Wozniak <i> is a production of UNC-TV</i> <i> in association
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we say that every student receives an extraordinary
education in an inspiring environment
with caring people, and we work very hard
to ensure that our students are exposed
to the greatest minds, men and women who've done
something in their life and who,
through values and culture and education
and intellectual gifts, can bring forth to our campus ideas that can inspire
our students so that when they graduate,
they can go on to do amazing things
with their lives. And today on our campus, our students benefited
measurably from a great mind, a man that<i> PCWorld</i> says, changed the world
with an invention. This is the person who invented
the Apple 1 and Apple II and, with Steve Jobs, changed the world
for all of us. <i> His name is
Steve Wozniak,</i> <i> and I'm delighted
to have him here
today as my guest.</i> <i> Steve,
welcome.</i> It's so great to be here,
and it's so great to encounter so many students
and graduates that are actually
taking advantage of technology that went along the lines
that I started. <i> Yeah, it
means a lot.</i> Our students love you. You--you spoke to them with language
they can relate to, and you spoke to them
about ideas that can make their future
more productive. Yeah, but that's part
of communication. If you want--
if you want to affect
their behavior positively, they've gotta, first of all,
like you as a friend. They've gotta clue into you. What you're sayin'
can't be like a dentist sayin', "Don't worry; it won't hurt,"
you know--uh-h-nuh! This is just the wrong kind
of advice. More to be good,
like you're on their level. I think of myself as a student
when I'm talking to students. Let's talk about you a bit;
you were born in San Jose. Correct,
San Jose,<i> California.</i> San Jose, California,
and you went to school there. Uh, nearby--Sunnyvale, more
the heart of Silicon Valley. Give us a little history
about where you grew up, where you went to school,
and, of course, we wanna know
what led to the Apple 1. It's really funny,
but when I grew up, I was in what's called
Silicon Valley now, but it was Santa Clara Valley,
full of fruit orchards-- one of the largest
fruit-producing areas of the world. And there was--
it turns out that the guy who invented the transistor, which is the heart
of the chips that are the heart of all
of modern-day technology, had flown out
and started a company in Mountain View,
California. Silicon Valley, uh--
after his company was sort of having trouble
making his type of device, engineers split off
to form their own companies, to form their own companies,
to form their own companies, and this huge thing
called Silicon Valley grew up. Eventually,
all the orchards went down. Homes, businesses, and a ton of electronics
companies went in. I got to grow up-- but I got to see
the change in technology. Technology is always changing
because of smart scientists and smart engineers,
physicists,<i> chemisists--</i> chemists,
and so I got to see it move from vacuum tubes,
which were hot tubes boiling electrons
off a filament in television sets, where the housewives
would pull out the tubes when a television failed, take it to the grocery store,
plug the tubes into a tester. Would you believe that people
would do such a geeky thing that were normal people? That was what it was like
back then. <i> But it moved into
these little,
tiny transistors</i> that used less power
and were smaller and made radios
you could hold in your hand, and then we got into chips,
and because of Moore's law, chips have gotten
a billion times larger in my lifetime. When did you become
interested in all that? Um, I stumbled into,
and it-- actually, it was started
in elementary school. My father was an engineer--
electrical engineer, but he would never
push us his direction. When he took us
to his work--wow! I admired him working
with dials and knobs and getting pictures
on little screens, and when he came home,
he worked so diligently on weekends with formulas
and everything, and he worked at Lockheed, so he couldn't tell us
what he did. But it turns out that I got interested
in electronics with science fair projects
in the schools, <i> and I would--
and I built
little projects</i> <i> about electrons
movin' through wires</i> and then, um, electrons that were being resisted
by--by substances and then
entire atomic displays. I would build--
by fifth grade, I was building these projects
that had hundreds of switches, hundreds of lights,
dozens of-- of what's called
mechanical relays all wired together, uh--
the million wires. Huge projects-- I didn't realize
how far ahead I was. I was doin' it for fun. It was fun to learn
this kinda stuff and actually make devices
that would impress people. Did I show them off
at school? No. <i> I entered them
in the science fairs.</i> <i> I won, but I didn't
have any friends</i> that would understand it
or teachers. I did it just for myself. It was very strange
to be that far ahead. Same thing with computers-- I started out
with a ham radio license at ten years old. That was what's called<i>
analog days--</i> the old days of electronics, and radios and televisions
were analog. That's what I thought
engineers did. I stumbled onto a journal
about computer ideas-- logic, a different type
of numbering system, a different type
of mathematics, and logical ways
to solve problems was part of a computer. So I--now, I started building
computer projects in elementary school,
in middle school-- huge projects
with hundreds of parts. When I'd look back, the amount of hours
I put in-- it's like each one of those was almost a master's program
in a university. I had no idea
I was advanced. I didn't talk to anybody. My dad didn't do it with me. He would teach me
when I needed help, but eventually,
I passed him up. I was doin' it on my own--
no teachers, no friends. So you were, like,
a 12-year-old? Yes, I was
a 12-year-old when I
really discovered it. By 14--
14, 15-- that was when I told myself-- I knew that computers were gonna be the passion
of my life. All I wanted to do
was design computers. I didn't even know
that there were jobs for computer designers. I thought I would be
an engineer by then. I would be a good engineer--
I was real smart in school-- and that I would be designing
televisions and radios and satellite guidance systems,
but I loved computers. I did it just as a hobby, thinkin' it'll never
go anywhere as a career. Even when I graduated
high school, I could design almost
any computer that existed in two days. <i> I'd gotten
so good doin' it
every weekend</i> just for myself
for fun on paper, um, I-- but I didn't think I'd have
a job designing computers. When I talked to college,
you know, entrance exam people, I would just say,
"Well, I'm-- "I wanna design devices
with knobs and dials that you make a change,
and it does something." What--what--when did it
become apparent to you that computers can understand
the human mind? Well, when I was very young,
I wrote a chess program. This computer that could do
a million things a second couldn't solve it. And it turns out,
I did a calculation. It would solve it
by brute force, by following
a simple method. It would solve it
in 10 to the 25th years, which is longer than
the universe has been around, and that taught me
that a fast computer doesn't solve a problem. It's the intellect
of a mind-- it's the intuition
of figurin' out, how do I solve a problem? Here's a problem that if I take
the normal approach, it won't solve,
and one solution is, you could break it
into smaller problems. I eventually solved
that chess program, but see, the human mind would
never be equaled by a computer. I believed that my whole life,
and actually, it was only up until
about two to three years ago that I was still doubting
that computers would equal the human mind
like Ray Kurzweil proposes in his book about singularity. I didn't think
it would ever happen 'cause we don't know
how the brain's wired, and now, I have actually
changed my mind. You don't have to know
how the brain is wired to finally build
a conscious computer. <i> For example,
you can answer
questions to me</i> <i> because you're--
you're a bright doctor.</i> <i> I can ask a lot
of professors
here questions,</i> and they'll have answers
'cause they have brains. But now,
everybody asks Google, and-- we never designed the Internet
thinkin' it would be a brain. It's just that when-- when it grew
and grew and grew, it had so much
of the world's information stored in storage and so many of the computers
to calculate it and so many publishers, we had to have
these search engines to find what you wanted. The search engines
worked their way up to Google. That turned out to do
what the brain used to--a part. So I believe we're gonna
get to consciousness, and it might be accidental
discoveries along the way. We'll take steps and say, "My gosh,
this is acting strange. "It's sort of
talkin' back to me and learning
like a baby does," and we'll say, "Whoa, this is
the formula for the future" because we always want
our machines to be like humans. <i> The biggest
thing of all</i> <i> is human versus
technology.</i> Which is more important? We're humans. We always want the human
to be more important. We build technology to help us,
and eventually, if-- what if it gets to where
everything is being run by technology
doing it for us, and we don't
have to do anything-- we're just takin' care
of, like, the family dog. So there are downsides. Whenever you have
a positive side of making people more powerful,
there's also downsides of, my gosh,
you aren't doing, like, the mathematics
in your head anymore because you have computers
and you have calculators. But we're getting
so much more done, and it feels good,
but we gotta get more and more to where
our machines start
feeling like humans. I can have
a discussion with you. No matter which way
I say something, you can understand me. I want to speak to machines
and have them understand me and come back
with their own proposals, their own ideas, um,
maybe even tell me some poetry, read me some famous literature, direct me to things that would be real appropriate
for me to discover all on their own thinking. I want them to come up
with methods to solve problems, which is right now
only in the human mind. And how do you think
that will change the world? What--
computers have made us so more efficient,
so more productive. We can do more things
in less time. We can build
larger organizations. We can rally people's talents
and skills in-- in ways that are focused
on important objectives. Same time, it's made us
disconnected as a society. We watch,
on a college campus, everybody running around
with their little computer. Especially young people-- Why do so many people seem
to have such an attachment and even a love
for their mobile devices? This new mobile generation has just changed
how the world works, and it changes
especially the young people. Love is a feeling,
but you know what? They love it because
it's more like a friend, like a real human being. It helps them
connect to the whole world the way they want to. It's like an extra limb
of the person, and, um--and the-- well, what the young people
are doin', we have to be very aware of
because they are the future. The way they're thinking today is what things are gonna be
in the future, and every time a machine
gets more easy to deal with like a human--
right now, I'm at a stage-- I hope
that I'm five years ahead of everyone in the world, but I like to speak
to my machine, whether I'm sending
a text message to my wife, an e-mail,
checking in somewhere with a Foursquare program. I'd much rather speak things
into it than tap, tap, tap and remember procedures
for doin' things. I think we're gonna
get past that part of even the mobile technology,
but here's the real key. When the computers
start getting conscious and really understand
what we mean, education-- education has been a sore point
for me my whole life. It's been second
to engineering. It was the thing
that I cared about so much. Well, you wanted
to teach fifth grade. And I did; I went
and taught eight
years secretly. I got to where
I was teaching
seven days a week, and I had different
classes going, and I wrote my own lessons
every day before class because I have to be creative. I don't want to get it
out of a book. I taught how to use
computers to-- (a) how to maintain
a computer because it's the most important
academic tool of your life, how to reach networks
to reach other people far away. That used to be, like,
Superman stuff. How could you
ever contact somebody in another country,
another state? And (c) the important
thing was, how to make your homeworks
look good-- that simple--
how to make them presentable. And I would discuss
which kind of fonts to use in what situations,
how to space things, what sizes,
what colors to use, how not to overuse color. Don't do childish things;
be a bit professional. Oh, I had
some great experts, you know, but for everything
you learn in school, apply a computer. It applies to everything,
whether it's time lines and graphics
that you print out or spreadsheets
with calculation data, um, things like that. The thing is,
I thought that computers, when we developed 'em, were gonna change education
so greatly that we-- kids would use 100%
of their mind instead of 10%. Everybody
would be ten times smarter, and I don't see
that that's happened. What's happened? What's happened
is pretty much, we learn
about the same level. The computer
is the presentation
device of today. It's a smart book. It probably does allow us
to go faster, but because everybody's
goin' the same much faster, you just--
education kinda looks the same. People kinda
come out of high school knowing the same things. There wasn't
a great revolution there, but the other revolution
would be, if you can save the ones that decided
to drop out of school. By third grade, teachers can look
at students, and some of those students
have decided they're not smart, and they're not gonna put
a high priority-- importance on education, at least in schools,
in their life. And the kids don't somehow
come back and recover in one year
in fourth grade or recover in fifth grade
or sixth grade. Once you get behind-- schooling builds upon
what you've done before, and you stay behind forever. And oh, I wish we could find
a way to save those people, and computers have
a possibility in the future. First of all, it--
the possibility could happen if you could have
one teacher per student. You could never fail. Every student would feel,
yes, they're learning, and they're being appraised
for the right things. They're being retaught things
they didn't quite understand. <i> You don't mean
this literally.</i> I mean it
literally. One teacher per student
would solve the problem. Everything
can be solved with money, so money could solve it. A teacher
with 30 kids in class-- some of them hide,
aren't paying attention. The teacher can't adapt to everybody's
individual problems and needs when there's 30 in a class. It's one of the good things
about homeschooling, probably,
'cause it's one-on-one. What if a computer
could be the teacher? What if a computer
had all the knowledge and could present it? We're at that point
right now, actually. Now, you could have
30 low-cost teachers, and the human
kind of oversees it-- helps with problems
that really need the computer-- the--the human intellect. The computer could-- every student could be going
at different speeds on different subjects. They could even decide,
when they go into high school, they want to focus
in a different direction like you do in college. That would be possible;
it hasn't happened. Why? Because, um, the-- the computer
is still more like, this is something
I have to do for my class. I have to do
pages 1 to 20 tonight, and then answer
these questions tonight, the same as everyone else
in my class. We haven't changed
the paradigm of the working of elementary
school, primary schooling. So what we can do is-- I think that what it takes
is a human touch. A human that knows you
and is your best friend and knows
your inner thinking. It cares about you
and your family. It even has feelings. So when we get
that conscious computer, it's gonna look
at the student's face. It's gonna know things you can tell
when you look at a person that you can't
really describe in words. It's gonna know
when to change the subject, lighten up a little,
tell a little joke, tell the kid, OK,
let's go have a little break, you know,
go play a game-- knows the best way to get
a certain child educated. Then I think we might
be able to go to the new paradigm
of education, being that your presentation, instead of being fixed
for everybody the same, it's random. Everybody's gettin'
different speeds. Somebody might even get through
high school in two years, and another person
in eight years. You know,
it might differ that much and go off
in different directions, different subjects. But the grade,
which used to be the variable, could become fixed. You don't get out
until you are competent. Then we won't have
a lot of people coming out that are very uneducated, illiterate,
and not gonna really find-- be a good part of the future
information economy where you have
to use your brain. Were you bored in school,
in elementary school? I was never bored once. As a matter of fact,
among smart people-- I knew a lot of smart people 'cause I would get math
and electronics awards in my schools
and that sort of thing. And I was one
of the top students, but-- and smart students often say that teachers
were just stupid. They were kind of dumb;
they didn't know anything. Steve Jobs talked that way, but he didn't get
really good grades. I got really good grades. I actually thought
all my teachers were important to me, they were the source
of my future in this world, and that they were smart. They knew things more than
I did and were teaching me. Nowadays, a teacher
doesn't know more about video games
or computers than kids do--heh;
don't fool yourself. But back then, no. I grew up totally, um, loving
the education experience. I would actually have subjects
that I liked a lot, like geometry
my second year of high school. I would take that book home, where you got
to work out proofs, and we would be assigned to do the even problems
at the end of a chapter. I would work
every single problem in every chapter. I mean, when you love it--
when you love it, the education comes out. When I taught young kids, uh,
fifth through ninth grade, I found that it was
less important what I taught, more important that I made it
so fun and interesting, they wanted to learn it. No question about that. <i> Motivation.</i> The role that a teacher... <i> mm-hm</i> ...plays is enormous because a really good teacher's
an enabler of learning. They discover
where your interests are and how they can channel them
in the right direction, whether it's in
elementary school or college. Some teachers are good,
and some are bad, and some--but you know, every single teacher
I ever had in my life really had good intentions
as a teacher. They really wanted us to get somewhere
and be improved, and yes, when I talk
about a bad teacher-- I only had
about one bad one ever, and the funny thing is,
his class was good. He was a good teacher to me. He didn't understand
a part of engineering. He--he just
totally didn't understand how it was done correctly
mathematically, and I did. And I couldn't even
convince him of the right way, but it didn't matter
that he didn't know it because I could learn
on my own from books, but still, his class-- it was actually
during college years, and it was just so fun
to attend with other people, discuss things,
you know, and the things you do
in a college class. Tell us about college. You did not go
in the beginning. You worked,
or you went to college, then you dropped out,
and you went back. No, what I did--
it's strange-- it's an unusual story, but I didn't have pressure
from my parents to go to a certain-- like, where I stood
in designing computers and electronics
and my math and science scores, I shoulda gone to MIT,
but I flew out to University of Colorado. It snowed. I had never been in snow
in my life, and I would not apply
to any other school, and my parents backed me up;
they let me do that. You know what,
I thank them so much for lettin' me follow my heart. What an incredible year it was. Back then, computers--
introduction to computers was a graduate-level course. Graduate level! I was a freshman,
so I was allowed to take it because I was in engineering, and I got an A+
in this graduate-level course. I wrote every program
I could think of writing. I thought, a computer! I wanna write programs
on computers-- solve problems
in the world! That was my love in life. I didn't realize
they had money issues, and I ran my class
five times over budget. Whoa, they made me scared that they
were gonna charge me. If I came back the next year,
I might get charged more than out-of-state tuition. I was very
frightened, and my parents said,
they could only afford one year of
out-of-state college, so next year,
I went to a community college in Cupertino. A friend of mine
duplicated the key to the computer room. OK, I ran those programs
my first year of college. I ran all those programs;
that was good stuff! I was teaching myself
how to program. I was in a computer
programming class. The university
treated it like it was bad. Next year,
we had a key. We'd go in at midnight
and turn on this IBM computer and all the parts of it,
the disk drives, and I would run programs till 2, 3, 4 in the morning,
shut down, and leave no evidence
we'd been in there. What I was doing
was good for my mind. I wasn't trying
to hurt anybody, but it would have been
called bad if I'd been caught. I was just exploring computers,
trying to learn on my own. To me, if a computer
sat unused, that was a crime. It wanted to be used,
used by somebody who wanted to learn
to get better at it. <i> So that was my second
year of college.</i> <i> Now, after that,
I was brought up</i> with such strong ethics by my father
that truth, you know-- you tell the truth
about yourself and things like that. That was so important to me,
and he also said, a lotta people,
you can borrow money, and then you owe people money. I didn't wanna ever have
a credit card. I just wanted
to live on what I had. So I went to work for a year
to earn the money for my third year of college,
as many do, and I got a job
programming a computer! I got the parts given to me to finally build
one of my computer designs! I built it up, and I was introduced
to Steve Jobs, and we just hit it off
as best friends, and we'd love
the technology together, although I was the only one
that created the technology, and that was
an incredible work year. Then, I went
to my third year of college. Every course I took
as a junior-- When you're a junior
in college, you have a lot
more freedom and choice of what your career is and what courses
you're gonna take. I took only graduate courses in hardware design
and software design. Those were the courses
I was interested in. I made the dean's list, and that was
an incredible time in my life. After that year,
though, I had-- I had actually fallen asleep on a freeway
and totaled my car. <i> I didn't have a car
anymore, and I said,</i> <i> "I'll go to work
for another year</i> to earn the money
for my last year of college." Well, I got incredible jobs
at Hewlett-Packard, and then we started Apple. It was ten years
before I could go back and finally get my degree,
but you know what? It's important
when you work hard at something that you believe
is important in your life, and I can't look back and say,
what I learned in classes that I ever applied
to my Apple designs, but I can say
that the methodology-- I learned how to learn-- the methods of how
to have a goal in your head, combine parts,
and get there and finish it. That was something that came--
I learned very much in college, and things
like master's programs and PhDs are that way. You give a goal,
and you say, we are gonna supply
various education tools that will help you
achieve your goal that might take,
you know, year or years. So tell me about, um--
you sold a calculator that you had for $500
or something like that. <i> Yep.</i> And you started,
with Steve Jobs, Apple Computer. Take--take us back to... <i> Be happy to.</i> ...to something we--
maybe we haven't, uh, read or we don't know,
something that--what-- what brought you together? What was the first... <i> Sure.</i> ...initiative look like? What were your fears
at the time? What did you do that you
would consider to be crazy, and then, we know
about the first product. It's called Apple 1,
and I found the other day that somebody located one and paid something
like $40,000 for it. Oh, no, no, uh. They've gone
for as much as 700,000. Seven hundred
thousand. No, the Apple 1's. [both]
Apple 1's. I'll describe that because
Apple doesn't own the Apple 1. It's very funny, but first,
when I met Steve Jobs-- remember,
computers in the old days, if you look in magazines
and see pictures, they all have these rows
of switches and lights. You don't know
what the heck that's about. You have to be a geek. I built a computer
with switches and lights of my own design
because somebody got me the parts
that I could never afford. It was when I worked
at that little company for a summer job. And I was introduced
to Steve Jobs, and he came,
and he sort of understood some digital electronics,
but a much lower level than I. I was up to the point I could
design computers and things, and he could kind of
put parts together and follow a design. He knew how to solder them
but not how to design. He never wrote
a program, really. We became very best friends
in a lotta areas. I was shy,
so I had no friends. Only friends I had
were electronic kids in the neighborhood. You were shy? You don't seem shy. You seem
very outgoing, assertive. <i> It's a different
point in time.</i> I've gone up a smooth staircase
of getting unshy, and it was
a long climb for me. But back then, I really had
just a few friends that were electronic kids
in my neighborhood. When we would do gardening
for the next-door neighbor, instead of being paid in cash, we wanted him to open up
his mayonnaise jars of parts, and we'd select parts and take a few,
little cheap resistors-- wow--
was our payment--heh, heh! I mean, that's how we lived;
we lived in that world. Well, Steve Jobs
was also--he knew-- understood electronics,
and we talked about some pranks we had played
at the high school. And I played pranks
largely because I was so shy and unsocial,
not accepted by others, it was sort of an expression
of social energy. That's how I look at it
psychologically at much later point
in time, um. Steve and I compared pranks, and I thought,
here's another guy that likes fun;
he was a prankster. By the time we started Apple,
his personality was gonna settle down
to something different, but when I met him,
he was 16. Now, I would develop product
after product after product for companies in California
and for my own enjoyment. Every time I did one
for my own enjoyment, Steve would show up in town 'cause he was goin'
to college in Oregon. He'd show up and say,
"Oh, my gosh! "We can make money
out of this. We can sell it." And the first products
we actually sold were little devices that put beep, beep, beep, beep, beep
tones into an American phone and dialed free calls
anywhere in the world. <i> It was
that easy.</i> <i> Nobody would
believe this!</i> It was amazing thing,
and he found ways to sell it. I only designed it;
I didn't intend to sell it. And then, video games-- we got into the arcade game
business together that way, and I designed a terminal you could talk
to faraway computers and use your home television,
which was free, and he found a way
to sell that one. Well, he was up in Oregon,
livin' on this-- some kind of farm, orchard,
whatever it was. He was more
the true hippie, where doin' the hippie things-- where I just admired them
and observed them, but I was smart enough
to have my feet on the ground. I got in a club, and they started
talking about these little chips
called microprocessors were gonna let us
build computers that a person could
afford in a home, a normal person. And they were coming out
with kits that were affordable. The trouble is,
none of them were computers. They were all equal to that little
switch-and-light computer I had built
five years before. That's what
they were equal to. You could put ones and zeroes
in the memory, but that doesn't make it do
something useful. I was so far beyond that, and I saw the formula
in my head for exactly the parts that would make one board
called the Apple 1 with 28
little one-dollar chips, 30 little one-dollar chips,
and a couple expensive ones, and that would be
an entire, complete computer. You could type on it
and see it on your own TV, and you could afford it. So what I did was,
I built this machine, and I built it because I was
inspired by a club where people talk, ahm-- intellectuals from Stanford
and Berkeley talked about how people
were gonna be able to communicate instantly
with dozens of others. We were gonna be--
a child would be presented a problem in school,
type in an answer, and be told instantly
if it was right or wrong. You learn very well instantly. You don't learn well when you get the right answer
the next day. That's fascinating;
all that fascinates me, how you started the company
with Steve Jobs, how you took a risk,
how you had this idea
that I could do something. It all began for you
at a very young age, but then you took it
to the next level. So many students here
want to do the next thing. We have interactive gaming at High Point, for example,
and computer science. They're fascinated by, how does a guy take an idea
and do something with it? You did it! Did you know at the time
that you're gonna make such an enormous impact
on the world? We were so young, so naive,
so immature even-- no business knowledge, no money, no experience
in this whole area. We just thought
we had somethin' hot that we had created and that we could
actually make. As a matter of fact,
our first idea to have a company
was not a computer company. It was a company
that would make a part called the PC board that let you plug
other real chips in that cost money, and then you could
solder them together, and you're all done
with the board. It's sorta like
an Ikea of computers. That was our idea, to sell
this little board for $40, but we had to invest a few hundred bucks
of our own money, and I sold my most valuable
possession for $500 just to get my little put-in
to the company, um. Now, when we-- now, that was not
the real start though. It's often credited as,
"they started in a garage." Yes, after the computer
was built, designed, I'd given it away
to the world for free. Steve Jobs came by,
and he said, "We should sell
that $40 part." I was so loyal to my company. I would never do anything
behind their back. It was Hewlett-Packard. They wound up
turning me down five times on the personal computer
that I believed in, but that let us go
and start our own company, and right away,
we got a huge order for completely built computers,
which meant $50,000 order. This was big time. For somebody
who has no money, yeah, that was when we scrambled. We started building them
in the house. We moved out to the garage so they could have
their house for--heh-- you know,
for kitchen stuff. So we moved to the garage, and we--
we built this computer. But really, it wasn't the one
gonna change the world. The Apple 1 was very important
because it told the world the formula for very few chips
that were affordable, parts that were affordable, a keyboard you typed on
like a typewriter that was
very familiar to humans, a television set
that displayed words. This was the formula
for the affordable computer that could do real work. <i> Now, the Apple II was
the great computer</i> <i> that was gonna
change history,</i> and the Apple II
was a very open machine. It was--
I hit on the luckiest, um, cleverest design ideas
of my life, and a lot--
you know, bringing things that used to be out on cables
in this part of the computer, which was the video. And you would just type stuff. You'd have graphics
moving around, a million colors a second
changing on the screen. You'd have bits flowing
like we have today, and we call it
photographs and pixels. That was all part of it. We knew this would
change the world. It was open;
we had a lot of slots that you could
plug in extra devices to make the computer connect
to lots of other things. It enabled us to eventually
move from a cassette tape that was storing data
to floppy disks that were hundred times faster
than cassette tape. It enabled the other world
to look and say, here's an idea I have. I can build a board that
connects to a musical keyboard, and now you can play music
on this computer. And I can write all
the software programs I want. A lotta games came out. Somebody wrote
a database program that could store
all your address list. Everybody kept address lists
in books up till then, so one idea after another
after another happened that we didn't count on. The big one,
it's referred to as the first
killer app, <i> and that was the first
spreadsheet program</i> <i> that let small businessmen
forecast their businesses.</i> Sales shot up ten times
because this program could do
what you could never do by hand with pencil and paper--
never do the job as well. No big computer ever did it. Companies now looked around and saw
a lot of their employees pulling in
the Apple II computers with this little spreadsheet, and they were beating--
they were doin' what their huge, million-dollar
computers couldn't do. That was the first killer app that really
made the industry go, but a lot more things were
gonna happen with computers. Where they would go over time-- We knew that they
were now powerful. People could program
solutions to every problem that existed in the world. <i> The computer
wasn't limited to
doing one thing.</i> <i> It can do a million
different things.</i> That's one of the advantages
of building this platform of a computer,
but, um, where it took us-- even through Apple II times, we had thousands and thousands
of different programs. And eventually, it was gonna
lead us to technologies where we learned
how to make computers smaller, lighter, carriable,
with a battery, and then, eventually, we got down to little phones
that are computers. No--yeah, we couldn't tell you,
when we started Apple, that there would ever be enough
memory to hold one song, and everybody has their music
on computers now. So no, you don't necessarily
have to foresee the future if you make it very open
and let other people extend it and find the ways
it can be used. So, slowly
and cumulatively,
all this came to be. What did your father
think of all this? Your father's an engineer. You really--you wanted to be
a fifth-grade teacher. You started all this, uh. Did you ever go back
to that school? Did you ever show
the teachers, I'm the guy who did all
these science projects? Was your father very proud
of what you did? <i> Yes.</i> Did your friends
take you seriously? What happened
to that shy kid? My parents and my family
were very proud, and I did a strange thing. I had no idea
how business works or stock or anything, but when I was issued stock
at the start of the company, I put a whole bunch
in my family's names. You know,
I had no idea how valuable that was gonna be to them. As far as education goes,
it was so important to me. When I was in a club,
before we even had a company, there was a woman I met
who took-- rolled a minicomputer
into elementary schools that I care so much about-- fourth to sixth graders
that I cared so much about and taught them
how computer programs are a set of instructions
that a human defined. And when a computer
makes a mistake, it's just because
a human made a mistake. Don't blame computers. I admired bringing--
teaching young kids about computers
because a ten-year-old can learn every single thing
about every computer-- software and hardware
there is that's digital. Every single digital thing
doesn't need higher-level math, doesn't need algebra even. So I admired that, so I wanted to give
the first Apple 1 we ever built to her. Steve Jobs made me
pay for it--heh! <i> He didn't wanna give it,
but I gave it to her,</i> the first Apple 1. When we came out
with the Apple II computer, I would go to schools
in Cupertino, set it up,
show teachers what it could do, take 'em for an hour through a bunch
of different things, just showing them
what was coming. And eventually,
we actually gave an Apple II computer
to every school-- every elementary school
in California because a law got passed that-- so it didn't
really cost us money. You'll be glad
to know that, uh, along with a couple
other regional partners, High Point University
actually adopted a school-- elementary school. And we gave 'em all iPads,
but more importantly, we provided the teaching
and the guiding of how to use technology
so that these young students can be prepared for life as-- as you so passionately
cared about and care about today. It's very progressive thinking,
and more than that, when young students
get things that young-- they get their own iPads
to use-- they know
they're treated specially. And when you feel that you're being
treated specially, it becomes more important
a part of your life than it would have been
without those iPads, so I admire that approach. You've received--you've been
at the receiving end of all kinds of awards. Ronald Reagan
gave you a major award. Other organizations given you
very significant awards, way too many to list here. Tell me about an award that meant a lot to you
and why. OK, first, I'll tell
about an award that almost nobody
knows about, and I'm in the
Consumer Electronics
Hall of Fame, um. <i> Sounds
interesting.</i> I'm only saying that because
I love consumer electronics. Plugging hi-fis together
in the old days, televisions,
tape recorders, where you plug
all the plugs together-- that was my growing up and my fondness
for gadgets and all. <i> But I'm only
sayin' that award</i> <i> because it's almost
never mentioned.</i> <i> Another award that's not
very well known that I got</i> that isn't mentioned
in a lot of these ceremonies-- the Grace Murray Hopper Award
by the ACM-- <i> American</i> Computing
Machinery<i> Society,</i> um-- it's an award for, um, basically
computer development-- computer science development
under the age of 30. It's a very, very
important award in the computer
science world, um. If I were
to be totally honest, what's the most important
one I got-- the Medal of Technology-- the National Medal
of Technology from the United States represents exactly what I did,
you know, and being
in the Inventors Hall of Fame. You have to be an inventor,
an Edison type, so somebody like Steve Jobs,
who was not technical, wouldn't really qualify
for that sort of award. <i> mmh</i> Tell us something
about Steve Jobs. You've--
you've known him well, um. When he, uh, died,
the world, of course, paid him a lot of homage and paid
a lot of attention, um-- big book
was written about him. Several books have been
written about him, but you knew him intimately,
and you knew him in a way that most
of the world did not know him. What's something interesting
you'd like to tell us about your relationship
with him, his personality,
the way his mind worked? <i> Yeah, his personality
changed quite a bit.</i> His mind,
from day one, though-- well, first of all,
when we first met, he really was
just a young person kinda searchin' for himself
in the world and trying to live on nothing, and he wasn't really
in the business, per se. He was 16 years old. <i> Yes, and he
was talking</i> about the important
people of all time-- Shakespeare,
Isaac Newton, and, like,
now I realize, he really wanted to be
in that group of people, but how do you become
one of those few special ones when you're eating seeds
and living with the Hare Krishna guys
up in Oregon? Um, when we started Apple, a personality
really comes to be solid around age 20 years old, and he was around that age
when we started Apple--21. And that's when he became-- he wanted to be
a company leader. He wasn't qualified to have
a company executive title, but basically he inter-- he just interjected himself
with his ideas. Why don't you do it this way?
Why that way? Why don't we do this? He got involved
in everything going on in the business of the company. Myself, I felt
that I don't wanna participate in things that other people
know more about, so what I decided,
I'll do engineering. I'm gonna be engineering
'cause I can never fail. So the two of us
became different people than we had been. We'd been
very similar personalities, going to concerts together,
laughing at jokes and all that. Steve became very serious. Now it was--
for him, it was not to talk about the fun jokes
we did growing up. It was more, you could only
talk serious business stuff and present yourself
that way, and, huh! And so he--
so that-- we became different
in that ways. We were in different parts
of the company. We worked together
running the company for the next few years
until we went public, you know,
at the staff level, but our goals--
our goals were different. Steve always somehow would--
if--if we were proposing, should we design
a certain kind of circuit or a different kind,
he would say, "No, no, no, no,
you have to do this way," and he'd have a lot of reasons
that he had prethought out. I imagined that Steve
went around thinking and dreaming
and figuring out things ahead of time on his own--
maybe long walks, and he would come
into an executive meeting. He would know
why you could point all the choices
towards option A instead of option B
or option C. So he always seemed, also,
to be the brightest, sharpest, quickest,
you know, thinker about what we should do, even though he wasn't
the builder himself. Can you think of one word
that would describe him? Um, different points
of his life-- he was very hyper, um,
and very, um--uh, quick-witted
and spirited with thoughts and trying to find, um,
thoughts that were important. He believed
very much in himself. He believed he was right--
very egotistical, actually, through all the phases
that I knew him, um. He was--I don't
know--heh, heh! You know, he's always
been friendly to me. He has a bad reputation for dealing with people
very harshly, but it's usually people
that aren't-- if you go to a company,
a few people really are great and matter,
and I was one of those. He always treated me
with respect. I never really saw him
lose his temper and just fire people
and say nasty things and make them feel so bad
and demoralize 'em. Never really did that
around me. I was in a special category. Even up to his death, we were
good friends, and we talked. Publicity would sometimes
try to make it like we had big rivalries
or something--never once. Lemme ask you
about your family. You have children;
how old are they? What do they do? Did they follow
your footsteps? I have three children--
boy, girl, boy, 30, 28, 20--uh, heh, I gotta think awhile
to remember it! Twenty-four, yeah. And what do they do? The boys are actually
both in technology. One went in computer science,
which is programming computers. The daughter is, um,
now in law school. She graduated in sociology
with a--with a bachelor's, and my younger son is in, uh,
computer engineering, which is a combination of hardware
and software design, sorta where I came from. And the lessons
you wanted them to learn most in life are what? Most in life is
to think for yourself, to think creative--
creatively, that you have a lot
of choice in the world. You don't have to follow
other people and be a follower. Be a leader. That's what you would say
if speaking to a group of high school kids
or even freshmen in college? What would you tell 'em? It's one thing, but not so much
as when I think of a college. I would think more like--
usually they approach me, and everybody these days
wants to be an entrepreneur. They wanna be one of these Silicon Valley
companies they hear about because these companies
come out of young people. As a matter of fact,
the great ones you hear about, the Apples and Googles
and Yahoos and Facebooks and all those kind, they come outta young people
that are just outta college. They see they have a chance
to be there. "How do I get there?" There's no formula
on a spreadsheet. You just gotta follow
what you believe in doing. Trust your own instincts. Do things well
and high quality and find a way to get it. You're not gonna be as big as
a Google or an Apple, usually, so we're bad examples
to follow what we did, but the formula we did will lead a lotta people
to success. First of all, pick today's-- look at what people want
and need in their lives. The marketing is so important. First of all,
you need the engineers, but you need
the business understanding. The businessman understands
who's gonna use the product, how and why, and the engineer
knows how to build it. Those two should work together
like me and Steve Jobs did. That's very important. Secondly, if you come out
as an entrepreneur out of a business school
and you think, "I know how to write
business plans to seek money. I know the steps to take,"
and you think, "I'll have a plan that I wrote
put on paper, and later I'll hire
an engineer to build it." I say,
that's the wrong way to go. <i> Get yourself
in touch</i> <i> with some
engineering
students now.</i> Try to find some
of those young creative ones like I was when Hewlett-- Hewlett-Packard knew I could
build some of their projects, and they turned me down
for one project because I didn't have
a college degree. I was workin' in a lab, but
I couldn't go to the PhD labs. And, um--but try to spot
those young people that are-- that are creative somewhere,
like in colleges, especially, and get them to join you
and define what sorta machine you could build
or be a part of or what kinda program
can you write-- "How can you enhance
this project?"-- because engineers
come up with some
of the cleverest ideas that businessmen
don't think of. And then work together. Include the engineering
in the definition of what your project's
gonna be, and then go raise your money. You know,
our students here understand that it's all about
experiential learning, and so we have, uh,
a major in entrepreneurship, and there are corporations
and organizations that give us money
to actually endow our students with the funding
so they can start a company and they can follow
their dreams and they can do the things
you're talkin' about, and it--it is<i> amazing</i> to me,
the ideas they come up with and the applications
that they create, and they do exactly
what you're saying. They design it,
and then they market it, and it's not just about
writing it theoretically. It's about
the application process. You know what? The judge of a school
is probably, "What do the students do? What do they become
in the future?" That's probably
the best judge of it. And there's one program,
a co-op type program. A student will work
for six months in a company. The company has agreed--
bought into the whole program. We will provide jobs
for certain numbers of students in certain categories. They will work for us
for six months. They'll come to school
six months. They'll work six months--
come to school. It solves two problems. The students
now have money for school, and (b)
they understand
how the schooling relates to business
and vice versa. Mm-hm,
very interesting. These are new,
innovative ideas that I think the world
is paying attention to in terms of how we make school really valuable for students
once they graduate and how do we make
the application of that which you learn
meaningful in your life? Your experiential learning-- I'd never heard about it
till you just mentioned that. That is absolutely
a great way to do it because it's like
the whole hands-on. When you create
things that work, when you experience
somethin' that you're-- that you're developing,
you know, writing, whatever, when you're really--
something's goin' into reality, that has such an impact on you,
such a motivation factor, such a reward, um--
I believe in that strongly. I believe that if you're gonna
start a company or something, have a working model. Be a builder. You think of that in science. There's theoretical science,
and there's applied science. There's theoretical engineering
and applied engineering. I was always
on the applied side. I wanna make, actually, devices that I can experience
and utilize and use, you know, and that's a good way
of thinking. Absolutely, and also you spoke
of holistic education, which is one
of our cornerstones at High Point University, and that is, what you learn
inside the classroom is very important,
but you must prepare yourself for a very ever-changing,
very competitive marketplace, and it's no longer
just in the U.S. It is a global marketplace. So how do you
develop yourself in terms
of communication skills, in terms of relational capital
with people, in terms of critical thinking, problem solving,
solution finding? These are the things
that really we have to ensure, that the future generation of--
of entrepreneurs and others, whatever avenue
they choose to follow, understand viscerally and apply pragmatically
on a daily basis. Well, you are a leader,
and you are a president, and you have to oversee
a lot of different disciplines. We wanna bring our kids up to realize that the real
important leaders have to cross
a lot disciplines. You know,
the communications maybe, the engineering,
the writing skills, the, um, understanding things
that normal people understand about world events
and politics and everything. That's all
an important part of life, but very few people-- most people
are gonna be organized into one specific category--
a few specific categories. Nobody's gonna be
completely broad across the whole spectrum. You can't expect
that you're only a good person if you learn everything. So one of the things is to understand
that you need to collaborate. Find the people with--
where you have weaknesses and you can make something
better than you can by yourself if you team up. Build bridges
of understanding
with others. That's what
it's all about. Where do you see
technology going? In the future,
I see technology-- um, I see a lot of conflict between what is human
and what is technology. Technology is already getting
to replace in a lotta things that we used to rely
on humans for, and you'll even walk
into a fast-food place and a little kiosk machine
lets you do your ordering. That means, they skipped
a person that did it. You go to the airport,
and you've got your kiosks, and some of the places,
you go right to the gate and don't see a human. You just flip bar codes
outta your smart phone. So, um, so technology is--
is (a) doin' the human jobs, but more importantly than that,
all our life in Apple, we worked on makin' it
easier to use so people could understand it. People understand people,
so if you make the technology work as though it's human, getting closer and closer
to real thought, real understanding,
feelings, and consciousness, we're gonna keep movin'
in that direction. Voice right now--
we're talkin' to our phones, "Set an alarm for this time. "Remind me to do this
when I get home. E-mail Janet:
I'm in a meeting right now. Or ask a question
about anything. Yes, or how--
yeah, "How far is it from High Point
to San Francisco?" And you get the answer
that quickly. This is like I'm talking
to a smart person, but it's gonna get more
and more like that. Eventually, these machines
are gonna be lookin' at me. I think they need
a sense of smell to be really human,
to really be-- They have to be able
to tell you, "Oh my gosh, have you smelled
the roses today?" What's the downside
of all that? Do you see a danger
to all that in terms of relationships,
communication? We have phenomenal
communication systems now because of technology, but somehow
in all of this pursuit, have we become
somewhat alienated, disconnected
as a large society? Philosophically,
I don't see a downside. What I see is change, and then after you
have change, you think, "This is where
we are now." You don't say, "Oh, my gosh,
we're much worse than before." I don't think people smile less
or frown more now than they did
a thousand years ago. I don't think it's more
or less--either direction. I think there's--that's been
a constant among humans, um. We--somehow there's something
in us that tells us, we have to create new things. I have to create change, and
that must be the right drive. It wouldn't be in us unless
it were proper to be there. So we're changin'
and creating a new world. Our role in the world
might be different, you know, but I look at the elephant
seals in California. I'm lookin' at them
in their natural habitat. They're not in a zoo;
they come in in January, and the females have babies
within four days. They mate
for, like, nine weeks and go back out to sea
to eat. They're livin' a life, and they must think the world
was created for them, and we humans are just
some little devices that are sittin'
up on the cliff. They must see-- from their perspective, it's,
like, they don't really know. We might be creating
a new society, a machine society
that actually supersedes us, but we don't know it. I mean, we're still gonna think
that we're number one. We're the important one
that's really dealt with, even if the machines
think somethin' else. Can you, uh, think
of, um, a project, a pursuit, something you tried
to do in your life and it didn't work? And I don't mean mechanically;
I mean in a larger scope. I don't mean a single machine
or a single application but a larger scope. Maybe it's a business,
maybe it's-- A marriage--
heh--heh, heh-- I don't wanna...
go there. Yes, it's
a business. And--and... why didn't it work,
and what did you do wrong, and how could you
have avoided it? What did you learn from it? In the Apple days,
I did project after project after project;
every one was an A+. Some of the projects I started, I didn't know
if I could even do them. I had never done them before. I didn't know if there were
solutions to certain obstacles. I found them;
miracles happen. They're worth a lot of money
when you do that. I started a company once to build small, little,
cheap GPS devices that you could buy for maybe
$30 at the grocery store. Pop it in your glove
compartment, and the battery lasts
for a year, and it's small, tiny,
inexpensive, and you never have to worry
about it. Um, I--I failed;
it was not possible. It is still not possible
with today's technology, and every--almost every night,
I might think about, if there ever comes a way
that that becomes possible, I'm gonna start another company
and build it again. I really love the device. Put it on a little dog,
a small device on any dog. You could instantly get
notified if your dog leaves, somehow breaks out
of its containment facility, outta your house, maybe,
out of its electronic fence. So why do you think
you failed? Was it timing;
was it capital? Was it relationships,
contacts? Why did you fail? I took on a very, um-- I didn't declare whether
it was technically possible with parts that are made
and available today: energy, supplies,
batteries that exist, um. I took on somethin'
very impossible thinking I will solve
a lot of impossible things, and I'll tell ya--
made a lot of progress. I have to credit my engineers
for some of that with a lot of clever ideas that took steps
towards makin' it possible, but it just didn't achieve
good enough goals. In other words, it could be
manufactured, and it worked. We did have a product
that worked, it just wasn't affordable,
small enough, low power enough. Mm-hm...what lies ahead
for Steve Wozniak? What lies ahead? I think about technology
all the time. I think about what companies
like Apple could do that would really, uh,
make sense in my mind. I don't always agree
with what the company does. How could they improve 'cause
I care so much about Apple. I think about other companies
and technologies: who's doing good things
and bad things. I explore;
I self-experiment. I will buy a new product and try every permutation
I can to learn myself. I don't like to read reviews
and trust reviews. I like to learn it personally
where I feel it. It's like art to me. And, um, in the future--
well, I have one idea I've been holdin' in my head
for 35 years-- not quite possible yet--
but to make these little chips that run our computers
and our smart phones and all of our great gadgets,
our GPSs. To make them where they-- instead of operating
on electrons, they will operate
on photons of light, because then photons
will take much less power because photons don't weigh
as much in human terms. And Woz, um, how would you
like to be remembered? I would like to be remembered
as a very smart engineer who learned how to connect
wires between different parts and make things
that never existed before but that I was clever and
could do it with fewer parts, in different, better ways
than almost anybody around me. And I, you know,
as far as this whole thing of starting the personal
computer revolution, I was gonna build a computer
for myself that year. The fact
that it was so important and it kicked off such
a huge thing that happened-- Yes, I wanted
to empower other people, but I don't wanna be
remembered for that as much as what came
from my education: my university education,
my own self-teaching education, which was how to design
computer-type products and how to write programs. My own style,
it was just so much my own. Well, I wanna be remembered
as a great engineer. That's--you are
so dedicated to that. You are such a--
an engineer, a scientist, a person who wants to create,
be innovative, that your whole life
has been driven by that. That's what you wanna be
remembered for, which is remarkable. You don't wanna be remembered
for achievements as much as remembered
as someone who was<i> invested</i> in his field
and in his scope. Decisions I made
when I was young and way too shy to ever
wanna be political or go into where you have
to deal with other people-- I never wanted
to move up an org chart. I wanted to be
an engineer for life. I told myself that;
I told my friends. I told the world that. I told them
why I admire engineers. Engineering is a form
of mathematics that has an answer
that has to be correct or not, and that's a form of truth
which I always put at the highest for everyone. You wrote a wonderful book which has been widely acclaimed
and--and, uh, widely read. Are you working
on anything else? Ah, heh, heh, heh! I was lucky
to write the book. I put it off for 20 years. Then, my last kid
finally graduated high school, and I was all alone. Right now,
I'm working with a company, Fusion-io,
and I'm hopin' they-- they are doin'
a different architecture of all the big computers in--
in the big data centers. Computers are gonna change--
how they're built, what kind of memory they use--
hugely in the future, and this company's the leader, and I admire
the way they think, and I admire the fact
that they do things differently than other people. I try to contribute ideas,
engineering ideas, as to how they can,
for example, get more performance
or make their products last longer,
be more reliable. Well, you do
a marvelous job at that. You are filled with passion. Your commitment to life
and to innovation is-- is clear and is appreciated
by all of us, and I thank you
for being here today, and I thank you for having
this conversation with me. I look forward
to our paths crossing again, and for students
at High Point University and as citizens
of North Carolina to benefit from your mind
and learn from you. A lot of students
today thanked me
as they graduated. I thank them. I thank them because,
you know, the-- I actually thank you
for the great education you're providing
because I'm hopin' they go and solve
some of the problems that my generation
didn't fix. Yeah, that's what makes
life worth living, and that's why
at High Point University, we say we're in the business of planting seeds of greatness
in the minds, yes, but also in the hearts
and souls of our students. Thank you
very much. Yeah, your thinking
is exceptional. <i> [mellow guitar arrangement]</i> Captioning
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