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Wolfson: You work a lot with kids and teach kids. Do you learn a lot from them? |
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Wozniak:
Oh yeah. That's one of the fun areas! It's incredible. Often, they'll
discover something in a program that I didn't know was there. Either an
easier way to do something; an alternate approach that's really better if
you think about it, and they discover it by accident. It's not just
because I have kids; it's because I have a class of 30 of them. There's 30
of them and one of me.
There was one kid who said: 'I've got a way to make animation in this program.' I said, 'No, this doesn't do animation.' 'Yeah, but I do it!' And I looked at his screen, and sure enough, he was doing it. And I learned a new technique. I taught it to the whole class!
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Leyba: A lot of people are worried that a lot of minorities and women are kind of getting left behind because the technology industry is a very male dominated field. Do you see that changing in the future? |
| Wozniak:
I worry about that hugely. I think its going the wrong direction and no
matter how much we're aware of it, and concerned about it, that there
aren't - well, there are small efforts here and there.
I know there's things like the Boys and Girls Clubs of San Jose and there's a group in East Palo Alto that some very good friends of mine have gotten associated with that try to work with kids in poor neighborhoods. And I just really worry that the Internet is going to reach some people and not others. |
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Wolfson: What are you doing with your life now? Can you explain what you do in this office? |
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Wozniak: This office is just a place for me to do all of my current charitable activities and everything else. I've got accountants and secretaries to handle everything so I can spend as much time as I can doing what I like to do, which is to work with computers and schools and kids. |
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"I can spend as much time as I can doing what I like to do, which is to work with computers and schools and kids." |
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I have a classroom in here and sometimes I go down to the schools. We have to do a lot of keeping up to date on computer technology, a lot of computer repairs we do here for the school district and for ourselves. I have to keep up with the technology to recommend purchases to the school district and to buy equipment for my own classes. I've contributed something like 12 labs to schools here. I am trying to lead the schools into being a little bit ahead of most of the districts in being wired, the long-distance wiring that basically gives us high speed internet to every school. I help the school district hire other people to set the technology direction of the district and I train staff and I train students. That's what I've been doing for the past five years.
Before that, I used the office just as a place to keep up with the latest in technology. But now, I don't have as fast a computer as my friends. | |
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"My best student ever -- well, that was probably my son -- but the other one was a girl." |
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And I just basically am more concerned with having a good computer, but one that's kind of middle-level that you can teach normal people with, and a normal person could have also. All my friends have the hottest, latest, fanciest sped-up equipment. But no, no, no, if you play that game, your whole life goes into it. It's like cars. You can get into making cars fancy and faster, and your whole life goes into it. And then you look back and say: Where did the last year go? All I did was add this, and add this, and try to keep it up. For schools and homes, you really just want to buy something that's kind of there and usable, without adding everything in the world to it. |
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Wolfson: How are the students? Are the girls and boys equal in skill? |
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Wozniak: In 5th grade, I've always found them very equal in results and interest and enthusiasm. But by 8th grade, it seems to change to where a bunch of boys are just experts and have used the computer every bit of their life. I don't find many of the girls like that. It's almost as if girls want to shun it and in the group dynamic situation, just pretend and not let on to other girls that the computer is really important to them. But that's not totally true. My best student ever -- well, that was probably my son -- but the other one was a girl. |
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Leyba: What do you think we as students can do to prepare ourselves for life in the information age? |
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Wozniak: Being good at computers comes from a lot of time spent
with
a computer. A lot of hours. There's nobody who just happens to know it
real easily. Computers are not simple, no matter what anyone tells you.
And the main thing as a teacher that I always think about is how do you
motivate students to put in enough hours so they become good at it.
As far as schools getting more into it, the problem comes from school administrators. In the case of the highlight school districts that you hear about, that are doing all sorts of things to show off on the network, they almost always have one person who is wealthy and has made some money in the business and is associated with a school. |
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"My whole life, I did not want to be a company runner. I just wanted to be a good engineer, wanted to write programs, design computers." |
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But getting the equipment
is really just a start. You have to have the ongoing training, support
and
repair, and people to keep it running. Even our own school district, even
with everything that I do, they don't pay enough salaries to really answer
computer questions quickly.
Computers are obviously the most important academic tool that we will have. The world has changed. For the rest of our life, from kindergarten on, that's the most important academic tool we'll have. Because it's an academic tool, unlike a car, which is just a living tool, it deserves being taught in school. |
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Leyba: If a student wanted to get a job at a high tech company such as Apple or any other, what could that person do to make that a reality? |
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Wozniak:
I've never been involved with running a company. My whole life, I did not
want to be a company runner. I just wanted to be a good engineer, wanted
to
write programs, design computers. I can't really direct people on career
paths. That's never been something I'm good at. My suggestion is to work
at what you're good at in life, even if it seems like just a pastime or
just a hobby or just the sort of thing you do on your own time when
there's
no reason to do it, when there's no grade or no salary. Eventually, if
you're good at it, it will have value.
Don't just do schlock work and go out and party with your friends at night. When you're young, skip the partying. Because if you work hard, and you're very, very good at something when you're young, you'll have a super life, for the rest of your life. If you do something better than other people, and you just want to do almost the best that a human could do at something, the one thing you like in the world, the one thing you're really good at, then you can walk into these real prestigious companies-- including Apple or other high tech companies-- you could be the one that they're begging for. |
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Wolfson: Your life has been mythologized. Is there anything about the myth of Steve Wozniak that you would like to correct? |
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Wozniak: One of the things that I find strange is that I have to
read the newspaper to find out who I am, so I can be that person. Little
errors in reporting just get carried out; history gets written. One major
national newspaper writes something, the opposite of what you said, and
that becomes history in books. And you see it in books. And then it's
repeated by the other books. All the history of all time must have been
written with these errors.
I wonder why, when I just did kind of normal things-- some good engineering and just what I wanted to do in life-- why everywhere I go, some people think that I'm some kind of hero or a special person. People want to say, it's one special person in the world that does the good thing. But it's really the body of people and their mass thinking that caused computers to happen. But you always want to pinpoint a few individuals and say this is why. That is dodging the fact that all people, really, were going that way. There was a long development of technology that was leading to what we have today. |
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Wolfson: Well, maybe they make you a hero because kids need a Tom Swift in their life. |
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Wozniak: Yeah, that's like it. We all want to build up the few heroes in our life. That's how we are as people. You can't change the human brain. |
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