iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon (Steve Wozniak)
– Highlight on Page 290 | Loc. 4291-4301 | Added on Saturday, January 21, 2012, 11:53 PM
And artists work best alone—best outside of corporate environments, best where they can control an invention’s design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee. I don’t believe anything really revolutionary has ever been invented by committee. Because the committee would never agree on it! Why do I say engineers are like artists?
Engineers often strive to do things more perfectly than even they think is possible. Every tiny part or line of code has to have a reason, and the approach has to be direct, short, and fast. We build small software and hardware components and group them into larger ones.
We know how to route electrons through resistors and transistors to make logic gates. We combine a few gates to make a register. We combine many registers to make an even larger one. We combine logic gates to make adders, and we combine adders to create others that can be used to create an entire computer.
We write tiny bits of code to turn things on and off. We build upon and build upon and build upon, just like a painter would with colors on a paintbrush or a composer would with musical notes.
And it’s this reach for perfection—this striving to put everything together so perfectly, in a way no one has done before—that makes an engineer or anyone else a true artist.
If you’re that rare engineer who’s an inventor and also an artist, I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone. When you’re working for a large, structured company, there’s much less leeway to turn clever ideas into revolutionary new products or product features by yourself.
Money is, unfortunately, a god in our society, and those who finance your efforts are businesspeople with lots of experience at organizing contracts that define who owns what and what you can do on your own. But you probably have little business experience, know-how, or acumen, and it’ll be hard to protect your work or deal with all that corporate nonsense.
I mean, those who provide the funding and tools and environment are often perceived as taking the credit for inventions. If you’re a young inventor who wants to change the world, a corporate environment is the wrong place for you. You’re going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you’re working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on a team.
That means you’re probably going to have to do what I did. Do your projects as moonlighting, with limited money and limited resources. But man, it’ll be worth it in the end. It’ll be worth it if this is really, truly what you want to do—invent things. If you want to invent things that can change the world, and not just work at a corporation working on other people’s inventions, you’re going to have to work on your own projects.
– Highlight on Page 290 | Loc. 4291-4301 | Added on Saturday, January 21, 2012, 11:53 PM
And artists work best alone—best outside of corporate environments, best where they can control an invention’s design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee. I don’t believe anything really revolutionary has ever been invented by committee. Because the committee would never agree on it! Why do I say engineers are like artists?
Engineers often strive to do things more perfectly than even they think is possible. Every tiny part or line of code has to have a reason, and the approach has to be direct, short, and fast. We build small software and hardware components and group them into larger ones.
We know how to route electrons through resistors and transistors to make logic gates. We combine a few gates to make a register. We combine many registers to make an even larger one. We combine logic gates to make adders, and we combine adders to create others that can be used to create an entire computer.
We write tiny bits of code to turn things on and off. We build upon and build upon and build upon, just like a painter would with colors on a paintbrush or a composer would with musical notes.
And it’s this reach for perfection—this striving to put everything together so perfectly, in a way no one has done before—that makes an engineer or anyone else a true artist.
If you’re that rare engineer who’s an inventor and also an artist, I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone. When you’re working for a large, structured company, there’s much less leeway to turn clever ideas into revolutionary new products or product features by yourself.
Money is, unfortunately, a god in our society, and those who finance your efforts are businesspeople with lots of experience at organizing contracts that define who owns what and what you can do on your own. But you probably have little business experience, know-how, or acumen, and it’ll be hard to protect your work or deal with all that corporate nonsense.
I mean, those who provide the funding and tools and environment are often perceived as taking the credit for inventions. If you’re a young inventor who wants to change the world, a corporate environment is the wrong place for you. You’re going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you’re working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on a team.
That means you’re probably going to have to do what I did. Do your projects as moonlighting, with limited money and limited resources. But man, it’ll be worth it in the end. It’ll be worth it if this is really, truly what you want to do—invent things. If you want to invent things that can change the world, and not just work at a corporation working on other people’s inventions, you’re going to have to work on your own projects.
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