I recently watched "Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview" on Netflix (also on YouTube here.) It's a complete interview from 1995 when Jobs was running Next, before he came back to Apple, launched the iPod and iPhone and basically ruled the world.
The interview was a real trip down memory lane for me because I remember the PBS show "Triumph of the Nerds" (on which they showed excerpts of the interview) very well. I loved that show; I may still have the much watched VHS tape I made of the series and the book on which it was based somewhere in the basement. Although the host didn't know it, the show was about me, my life in high school, University and my first career as a programmer at SaskTel.
But I was really taken aback listening to him now, some 20 years and a lifetime later. Steve Jobs' ideals and vision resonate with me now even more than they did in 1995.
The best bit for me had nothing to do with technology. At the very end of the interview, Jobs was asked if he was a Hippie or a Nerd. After declaring for the Hippies, he defined what that meant to him.
[Hippies see that] There's something beyond what you see every day. There's something going on here in life that's more than what you see. More than a job and a career and a family and two cars in the garage...
...It's the same thing that causes people to be poets instead of bankers. I think that's a wonderful thing. And I think that same spirit can be put into products. And when you give that [the product] to people they can feel it.
...So, I don't think the best people who I've worked with, worked with computers for the sake of working with computers. They worked with computers because they are the medium that is best capable for transmitting some feeling that you have and you want to share with other people.
It's a weird feeling hearing that now because I started out using computers with exactly that feeling. Lately I use flour and water and bread as the medium. But the goal is the same: to build something awesome and share that spirit with other people.
Since I no longer have my bakery, I need to find something else to do. But I'm after more than just a job; I need a different way to share that spirit. It might be with bread, or with words, or even with technology again.
I've tried explaining this to prospective employers or partners but I've been scraping around the edges. That segment in the video helped me find the centre again.
What's your medium? What glimmer of awesomeness are you sharing with other people?