Steve Wozniak’s eclectic experience as relentless tinkerer, entrepreneur, and longtime hero in the geek community — known now as much for his appearance on “Dancing With The Stars” as he is for co-founding Apple, Inc. — attracted a standing-room only crowd at the Washington Convention Center yesterday. And the Woz did not disappoint.
Wozniak served as a much as human icon for the technology world as he did as a keynote speaker at the 35th annual FOSE Exposition, a government technology trade show.
Wozniak zig-zagged across a variety of themes, stringing together a rambling mix of anecdotes–from his high school memories building homemade computers, to working at HP, to teaming up with Steve Jobs, to his more recent work as chief scientist at Fusion IO.
His main message, if there was one, was the importance of designing technology to make life and work simpler for humans–and finding the motivation to overcome seemingly impossible challenges. (See video highlights.)
“You learn so much when you do things for yourself, for your own personal reasons,” he said, noting that a good boss, who gives employees creative freedom and challenges you with good questions, is still important.
At the same time, he acknowledged that in many ways, technology has already won the battle when it comes to the question of which is the master in the evolving relationship between humans and computerized devices.
“If the technology is the master of the human, then the human has to change his ways” to use it, he said. “That’s a bad way to go. You should always make the human more important.”
Wozniak recalled his early fascination for computers began as a relentless interest in trying to design better computers with fewer chips, “to pass time, like doing cross word puzzles,” he said.
He also spoke of how much technology has changed, from a time when computer chips were so expensive, that only the government or big corporations could afford them, to today when it is consumer demand that is driving the state of the art.
He also marvels at how almost everything we do these days, like looking up the spelling of a word, is done electronically.
“Our life has changed because of Moore’s law,” he said.
He acknowledged the dreams for technology haven’t turned out as planned.
“Instead of the three-day workweek we envisioned, we now have a world where both parents have to work full-time just to pay the bills. I’m not sure how we lost that dream.”
Wozniak also advocated the importance for organizations to support in-house innovation and development rather than turning completely to commercial off the shelf products.
In the long run this leads to more innovation, by streamlining processes and systems, he said, that can be adjusted in a more agile environment.
Wozniak recalled his early insights into cloud computing.
“The cloud is getting closer and closer,” he said. “Close to 15 years ago, at my father’s wake, Steve Jobs talked to me about ‘oh my gosh, some day all these things we do that are close to us are going to be out there, done in the cloud.”
Wozniak maintains a decidedly mix feeling for computers, never-the less.
“Well, computers allow each person to do more work and use more energy, and more energy means more pollution, so computers have probably increased pollution in the world. Every time we make a computer that can do something for it, we make ourselves less important.”