I'm pleasantly surprised, looking at the videos and reading through the transcripts at http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070531/d5-gates-jobs-transcript/ of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at the All Things Digital Conference (D5).
A few things struck me:
(1) The recurring notion of risk taking.
(2) The need to have such passion in what you are pursuing, which can be the only thing that sustains you when the going gets tough.
(3) How differently Jobs and Gates presented their views as a visionary.
It sets me wondering out loud:
(a) Of all those me-too sites, or even the popular sites on the web today, how many of them are actually driven by people who truly love it, or simply to weasel a way in for sudden riches? Do we really have the pure hearts in Silicon Valley, among other places, to truly pursue breakthroughs, and not just for the money??
(b) It's a noble notion that neither Jobs nor Gates fully cared for the money when they started out, and that they simply charged ahead. How else would you have expected otherwise, for anyone to stay at the forefront (or closer to it in Jobs' case, or not too close in Gates' case) of innovation, and be able to sustained on a prolonged period? How else would one have expected a bounce-back, and 2nd act, if not 3rd act by Jobs?
(c) Be it benign or truly genuine, the mutual respect that the two showed to each other, shows us all what competition and sportsmenship truly mean.
(d) How many of us can truly "let things go", or seeing the things "that doesn't matter," in the case of Jobs, when what one should do is to look ahead, and not in the rear mirror?
(e) I was particularly struck by how Jobs can see things in very abstract terms, when he sees and "groups" things, and when he talks about the future. This is in contrast to Gates' notion of things that he envisions as how he sees things could evolve around the PC (or Windows). To me, a visionary vanguard is one who thinks abstract. To me, Jobs really showed us what a truly visionary is like.
(f) It's amazing to see how alike the two of them are, yet they're so different. They can both build on their wisdom and intelligence and knowledge over all these years, yet are still able to see into the future. Of how they value the importance of great people.
(g) I don't personally think much of Microsoft, although no one could argue of its many accomplishments, of having been able to standardized the PC, and allow slew of hanger-on industries to mushroom. And it's noble for the philanthropy work by Gates' great 2nd act. I sure hope he will succeed in this.
(h) Looking at the industry's newer guys, perhaps the more noticeable ones that got in the game, not entirely for the love of money, but for what they see as a paradigm shift (or see how far their work can go), are the two founders of Google. I certainly hope that they keep their heart and soul pure to what they had originally set out to do, according to their Do No Evil mantra.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment