Steve Jobs is 28 years old and looking a little nervous as he begins his speech to a group of designers gathered under a large tent in Aspen, Colorado. He fiddles with his bow tie and soon takes off his suit jacket, letting it fall to the floor when he can’t find anywhere else to put it. It’s 1983 and he’s about to ask designers for their help in improving the look of the next wave of personal computers. But first he’s going to tell them that these computers will destroy the lives they’ve led so far.
“How many of you are 36 years old… older than 36?” he asks. That’s how old the computer is, he says. But even the youngest in the room, including himself, are “pre-computers” of sorts, members of the television generation. A distinct new generation is emerging, he says: “In their lifetimes, the computer will be the predominant means of communication.”
A pretty accurate statement at the time, considering that, according to Jobs’ impromptu survey, very few of the attendees own a personal computer or have ever seen one. Jobs tells the designers that not only willpower Soon they will use one, but it will be indispensable and deeply woven into the fabric of their lives.
The video of this speech is the centerpiece of an online exhibition called The objects of our lifepresented by The Steve Jobs Archivethe ambitious historical project dedicated to telling the story of Apple’s legendary co-founder. When the exhibition opened earlier this month, following the discovery of a long-forgotten VHS tape in Jobs’ personal collection, it struck me as not only a compelling reminder of the late CEO, but pertinent to our times, when another new technology arrives with equal promise and peril.
The speech was given at the Aspen International Design Conference, whose theme that year was “The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be,” making Jobs the perfect speaker. While much of the talk revolves around his vision of the beauty of products, the underlying message seems lifted from that Bob Dylan tune: Something is happening and you don’t know what it is. He told his listeners things that seemed absurd: that in a few years, more computers would be sold than cars, and that people would spend more time on those computers than riding in those cars. He told them that computers would connect to each other, and that everyone would use something called e-mail, which he had to describe because it was such a foreign concept at the time. Computers, he insisted, would become the dominant means of communication. His goal was to make all that happen, to get to the point “where people would use these things and say, ‘Wasn’t it always like this? ’”
Jobs’ vision seemed to convince his audience, who gave him a standing ovation. Before he left Aspen that week, Jobs was asked to donate an object to be placed in a time capsule commemorating the event. It would be unearthed in 2000. Jobs unclipped the mouse from the Lisa computer he had brought to the demonstration and stored it in the capsule, along with a Moody Blues 8-track tape and a six-pack of beer.
The speech itself is a time capsule of sorts. Jobs was right when he said that one day we would not be able to imagine what life was like before these new tools he was introducing to society. Those of us who are still here and who, in Jobs’ words, were “born pre-computers” often astound young people by describing how we did our work (manual typewriters! carbon copies!), communicated with each other (telephone booths!), and entertained ourselves (three television channels!). Bonanza!) before computers became our virtual appendages.