Hackers at Play at Maker Faire 2007 - And Then There Was Steve
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Steve Wozniak was interviewed at the fair on Saturday afternoon, to a standing room only crowd. In keeping with the event’s love of invention, he pulled up on a Segway. Those who attended last year’s Maker Faire may remember seeing him rolling around on the two-wheeled vehicle, playing Segway polo and otherwise enjoying the fair. This year, in the words of Daniel Terdiman, he was here to thrill the attendees “with romantic and impassioned stories of the power and excitement of mathematics and engineering.”
Wozniak pointed to the fair as standing for a concept that was very popular in his youth: the idea of just sitting down and making something fun. He talked about his childhood, and how he got turned on to computers and binary mathematics thanks to a magazine article he read in the fifth grade. No doubt he struck some chords with his audience, some of whom remembered their own younger days (if they weren’t still young themselves) of tinkering.
Another memory that probably reached many people was of not being part of the “in” crowd at school. He and his friends “decided early on that we knew electronics. We were a group. Of course, that set us apart from other people at school. You know, they were the ‘normal’ people.”
Ironically, it was that very knowledge that enabled him to overcome his shyness. “For me, if I could design things and show them to people, I had something good I could talk about. You always feel good about the things you’re good at.”
Most importantly, he talked about how his passion for computing committed him to his goals and eventually led him to co-found Apple. No doubt the talk planted seeds that fell on ripe soil among the young and young-at-heart among his audience. Would one of them become the founder of the next Apple?
Time alone will tell. But there’s little doubt that they shared the sentiment that was born in the early days of the Homebrew Computer Club, back when wild rumors of people eventually being able to program their own computers started circulating. “They said that the guy who knew how to write computer programs was going to be more important in their company than the CEO,” Wozniak said. It was an exciting thought then, and may be true at some of the best companies today.
But there was still plenty of fair to see after Steve Wozniak’s speech.
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