Justin Jay Wang

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I came across, by way of Soleio, a Steve Jobs interview with Playboy magazine from Feburary 1985. The referenced interview transcript is no longer online, so I’ve reproduced it here on my site.

Steve Jobs Playboy Interview
David Sheff, Playboy, February 1985 Playboy: We survived 1984, and computers did not take over the world, though some people might find that hard to believe. If there’s any one individual who can be either blamed or praised for the proliferation of computers, you, the 29-year-old father of the
Justin Jay Wang

Well worth the read and packed with interesting ideas, including:

  1. On rigid thinking:
People get stuck as they get older. Our minds are sort of electrochemical computers. Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them. It’s a rare person who etches grooves that are other than a specific way of looking at things, a specific way of questioning things.
  1. On intuitive and expressive tools:
[The telephone] performed basically the same function as the telegraph, but people already knew how to use it. Also, the neatest thing about it was that besides allowing you to communicate with just words, it allowed you to sing. […] That is what Macintosh is all about. It’s the first “telephone” of our industry. And, besides that, the neatest thing about it, to me, is that the Macintosh lets you sing the way the telephone did. You don’t simply communicate words, you have special print styles and the ability to draw and add pictures to express yourself.
  1. On embracing corporate troublemakers:
What happens in most companies is that you don’t keep great people under working environments where individual accomplishment is discouraged rather than encouraged. The great people leave and you end up with mediocrity. I know, because that’s how Apple was built. Apple is an Ellis Island company. Apple is built on refugees from other companies. These are the extremely bright individual contributors who were troublemakers at other companies.
Filed under: Media Technology

I asked ChatGPT:

this is a picture of me. can you roast me?

ChatGPT:

Haha, you sure you want me to roast this? Alright, let’s see…

You look like the kind of guy who corrects people’s grammar mid-conversation and then says, “Just trying to help!” The peace sign screams “I’m chill,” but the tucked-in elbow says “but also kinda anxious.” And I see you holding that guitar—bet you’ve played Wonderwall at least once to impress someone. 🤣

That oversized tee is giving “I wanted to wear a blanket but settled for this.” And that haircut? It’s like you told the barber, “Make me look like every indie film protagonist who stares out of windows contemplatively.”

Honestly though, you look like the friend who always has the best music recs but refuses to share them because “you probably haven’t heard of them.”

All in good fun—you’re rocking the effortlessly casual look! 😄

Not bad.

Filed under: Technology

I finished reading Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, using iBooks, on my iPhone. Some thoughts and takeaways:

  1. Importance of intuition, often times over rational thought.
  2. Product, not profit. I remember being surprised at how profit-driven some of the business students were in my collaborative MBA/engineer class last year. Focus on making a great product, instead.
  3. Less is more. Giving the user fewer features and fewer options means a more focused, elegant product and experience. I agree often times users don’t know what they want.
  4. In some cases, Jobs took the approach of prioritizing design, and finding a way to engineer it later. Even better, make great engineering the essence of the design itself, so that a product’s aesthetic elegance is exactly its elegance in engineering or manufacture. It’s hard to decouple design and engineering, so arguably the best of both worlds would be an engineer who understands the importance of design.
  5. The people you work with and quality of work. It’s not hard to differentiate great work from not-so-great work; I’ve been fortunate to have worked with a handful of people who produce great work in my time at school.
  6. Take inspiration from nature. Make products that are harmonious, that take the path of least resistance.
  7. Look at how the tools and products that humans create fit into the big picture. Then make a dent in the universe.
Filed under: Reflection Design Media Technology
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