(The Picturephone in 1964 - courtesy AT&T Archives)

NYTimes recently published an opinion piece on “True Innovation” by Jon Gertner who has an upcoming book on Bell Labs. I have mixed feelings about the piece.

I agree that Bell Labs was great and today’s media/entrepreneurs/VCs seem to be obsessed with end-user applications that have nothing to do with “hard sciences” or true innovation (scientific breakthroughs, fundamental advances in technology). 

On the other hand, I don’t think it’s possible to create a Bell Labs today. It was funded by a monopoly and the closest thing to it can be a R&D lab of a tech giant with enough money to spare. I think Jon was better off not comparing Bell Labs to the Silicon Valley: a better question could have been that how can national funding agencies, research labs, and universities better enable long-term innovation in “hard sciences” like Bell Labs did. While I completely agree that the term “innovative” has lost its meaning lately with every stupid simple mobile app getting labeled as one, but the fact remains that it’s not the goal of profit-seeking entrepreneurs to enable the kind of innovation that he is talking about.

My fascination with the human brain continues. Was watching a TED talk “Iain McGilchrist: The divided brain” yesterday and the above Einstein quote stood out. Finding the right balance between the intuitive and the rational brain might be hard, but definitely worth the effort.

Today was a different morning. You know one of those days when you actually manage to wake up at 6am, and are the first person to enter the library with a fresh cup of coffee in hand. Had no idea, I’d be writing this post later in the evening. For a few seconds, I was too teary eyed to take a snapshot of Apple’s homepage. Then decided to collect this into a memory. 

I remember watching his Stanford Commencement address in 2005. He was telling a story about death, his lessons from coming very close to it, and then said “This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades.” - I remember thinking “God, please. Let him live a few more decades”. A few weeks back when he resigned as CEO, I knew this day was coming. And soon. I thought about the release date of his autobiography and was wondering if he’s holding the book back because he wants it to come out after his death? Crazy thoughts, yes. But it’s OK to worry about someone you admire this much, I guess.

And today it happened. Steve Jobs (1955-2011) is dead at the young age of 56. He packed one hell of a life in these few years. Below are some random Steve Jobs quotes from my notes:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

- Steve Jobs, 2005

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“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward.”

- Apple Ad (1997) 

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“Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?”

- Steve when trying to hire Pepsi executive John Sculley (~1983)

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“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”

- Steve on Mac OS X (2000)

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“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.”

- Steve Jobs (2005)

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“Beneath it were the words: Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.”

- Steve Jobs (2005) 

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Steve is gone, but his mothership is still standing in Cupertino. Thank you, Steve Jobs for living, and for showing others how (not) to live.

I love this work by Stephen Wilkes, where you can see the city going from day to night in the same shot. Stephen spent hours taking hundreds of shots to create each one these pieces. The above view of Washington Square is almost what you’d see from the Bobst Library at NYU. You can view more here. 

Goodbye twenties @ Vegas