Steve Wozniak is young. Steve Wozniak: “I really believed in myself when I began to design computers

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Everyone is who Jobs is, how he looks and what he does. And who is Stephen (aka WOZ) Wozniak? There is not so much information, in the Russian Wikipedia one paragraph is written about him, and I have not seen photographs anywhere except on the same Wikipedia. Therefore, I decided that it would also be interesting for you to read about this figure of the computer world in Russian.

Stephan Gary "Woz" Wozniak (born August 11, 1950, in San Jose, California) is an American computer engineer who has become a philanthropist. His inventions greatly contributed to the revolution of personal computers in the 70s. Wozniak founded Apple Computer (now Apple inc.) With Stephen Jobs in 1976. In the mid-70s, he created the Apple I and Apple II computers. Apple II became incredibly popular and eventually became the best-selling personal computer in the 70s and early 80s.

Stephen had several aliases, such as: “The Woz”, “Wizard of Woz” and “iWoz” (pun; pun with iPod’s). “WoZ” (short for “Wheels of Zeus”) is also the name of the company that Stephen founded. He also created the initial prototype of the classic Breakout game for Atari in 4 days. He is known for his introvert character and finds his popularity as an annoying thing. At Apple Computer, he was also called The Other Steve. Steve's better known name is Steven Jobs, who is co-founder and CEO of Apple inc. He was also called “Woz” in order to distinguish between Jobs and Wozniak, because they had similar names. Only Jobs was called Steven, and Wozniak was Stephen.

Dawn of apple

In 1975, Woz left the University of California (he would return there later to finish his EECS studies and earn a bachelor's degree in 1986) and appeared with a computer that made him famous over time. However, he worked primarily to impress the members of the Home Computer Club, which was located in Palo Alto. He did not set any high goal.

Steve Jobs, his school friend, had the idea to sell a computer in the form of a fully assembled PC. Wozniak was skeptical at first, but Jobs convinced him - saying that if they did not succeed, they could at least tell their grandchildren that they owned their own company. They sold all their valuables (Wozniak, for example, sold an HP scientific calculator, and Jobs a Volkswagen van), bailed out $ 1,300 and collected the first prototypes in Jobs’s bedroom, and later, when all the free space was taken up, they moved into it (Jobs) garage. Their first computer was a real engineering miracle, in the context of the computing industry of 1975. In ease of use, it was years ahead of the Altair 8800, which was introduced earlier in 1975. The Altair 8800 did not have a display and a real data warehouse. The computer received commands with the help of switches (one program could require several thousand switches made without a single error), and its output device was a set of flashing lights. The Altair 8800 was perfect for people who were interested in electronics as a hobby. For them, its nature, which required compulsory assembly, was in fact a special feature ... but, unfortunately, it was completely unsuitable for the general public. On the other hand, Wozniak's computer, which he called Apple I, was a fully assembled and working device, on board of which was a $ 20 MOS 6502 microprocessor and ROM. To get a real PC, it remained to add a little RAM, a keyboard and a monitor.

On April 1, 1976, Jobs and Wozniak created Apple Computer. Woz retired from Hewlett-Packard and became vice president of research and development at Apple. The Apple I computer was put up for sale at a price of $ 666.66. Jobs and Wozniak sold 100 of their first computers to local dealers.

Wozniak could now focus on correcting flaws and expanding the functionality of Apple I. Its new design was to retain the most important characteristics: simplicity and usability. The Apple II Woz introduced high-resolution graphics. Now his computer could display not only text and symbols, but also images: “I added the ability to output in high resolution. At first it was just two chips, because I didn’t know whether it would be useful to people. ” By 1978, he had also designed an inexpensive floppy disk controller. Together with Randy Wigginton, he wrote a simple DOS and file system. Shepardson Microsystems was involved in creating a simple console interface for its DOS.

In addition to hardware development, Wozniak wrote most of the software that worked for Apple. He wrote the advanced programming language Calvin, a set of virtual instructions for a 16-bit processor known as SWEET16, and the computer game Breakeout, which led to the addition of sound.

In 1980, Apple II went on public sale and made Jobs and Wozniak millionaires.

Beyond Apple II

For years, Apple II remained the main source of revenue for Apple and ensured the viability of the company when its management took on much less profitable projects, such as the ill-fated Apple III and the small-lived Lisa. Thanks to Apple II’s strong earnings, the company was able to develop the Macintosh, bring it to the market and make it its core technology — eventually replacing the computer that paid for it all. In this sense, Wozniak can be considered the godfather of "Mac"

In February 1981, Steve Wozniak crashed on his Beach Bonanza plane while taking off from Santa Cruz Air Park. As a result, he received retrograde amnesia and temporary anterograde amnesia. He did not remember this incident and did not know that he was in a plane crash. He also did not remember his stay in hospitals or the things he did after he was discharged. He was engaged in ordinary affairs, but did not remember them. Woz began collecting pieces of information from different people. He asked his girlfriend, Candy Clark (previously worked at Apple), if he was in any kind of disaster. When she told him about the incident, his short-term memory returned. In fact, Woz and Candy were engaged, they ordered wedding rings in San Diego and flew there after them. Also, Wozniak thanks his computer games for Apple II in his release from amnesia.

Stephen did not return to Apple after the crash. Instead, he married Candy Clark (he called her “Superwoman”, possibly due to her achievements in the Olympic kayak in 1976) and returned to the University of California at Berkeley under the name Rocky Clark, Rocky was called his dog, and Clark is his wife’s maiden name, where he received his degree in 1976. In 1983, he decided to return to the Apple development team, and he needed the position of engineer and incentive element for the company.

In 1982 and 1983, Wozniak sponsored two national festivals that were dedicated to the developing technologies and the collaboration of music, computers, television and people. They were a combination of a technology exhibition and a rock festival.

Woz and Candy divorced in 1987. At that time, they had three children, two boys and a girl. Later, during a graduate meeting, he renewed his relationship with Suzanne Mulkern, a former cheerleader leader (support group). They both married in 1990, and divorced in 2000.

Careers Outside Apple

February 6, 1987 Wozniak again leaves Apple, this time forever. 9 years have passed since the foundation of the company. Despite this, he is still listed there as an employee and even receives a salary, and a block of shares remained with him. Wozniak then founded the new CL9 company, which developed remote controls. It launched the first universal remote controls on the market. Out of spite, Jobs threatened his suppliers to stop business with Wozniak, otherwise they would lose business with Apple.

He found other suppliers, in return for those with whom he worked for four years, but was disappointed in his closest friend

Wozniak went to teaching (he taught fifth-grade students) and charitable activities in the field of education. After being fired from Apple, Wozniak transferred all his money for the Los Gatos school district technology program (the district Steve lives in and where his children attend school). Unuson (Unite Us in Song) is an organization that Steve founded to organize two National Festivals, which is now mainly used by him for his educational and philanthropic projects.

In 1985, Ronald Reagan presented Wozniak with a national technology medal.

In 1997, he was appointed a member of the Museum of Computer History in San Jose. Wozniak was the main sponsor and philanthropist of the Children's Museum of Discovery (the street opposite the museum was renamed in his honor, Woz Way).

In September 2000, Wozniak entered the National Hall of Fame of the Inventors.

brilliant American engineer, together with Steve Jobs founded Apple.

Stephen Wozniak ( floor. Stephen Gary Wozniak; August 11, 1950, San Jose, pc. California), an American computer developer and businessman, co-founder of the company Apple. It is considered one of the fathers of the personal computer revolution. His inventions greatly contributed to the revolution of personal computers in the 70s. Wozniak founded Apple Computer (now Apple inc.) With Stephen Jobs in 1976. In the mid-70s, he created the Apple I and Apple II computers. Apple II became incredibly popular and eventually became the best-selling personal computer in the 70s and early 80s.

Stephen had several aliases, such as: " The woz», « Wizard of woz"And" iWoz» ( pun; pun with iPod’s). « Woz» ( short for Wheels of Zeus) Is also the name of the company that Stephen founded. He also created the initial prototype of the classic breakout games for Atariin 4 days. He is known for his introvert character and finds his popularity as an annoying thing. IN Apple computer he was also called " Another steve". The better known Steve is Steven Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple inc. He was also called "Visas" in order to distinguish between Jobs and Wozniak, because they had similar names. Only Jobs was called Steven, and Stephen Wozniak.

Dawn of apple

Since ten years I wanted to become an engineer, like my father. If for some reason it didn’t work out, he would become a school teacher. I was inspired by books, according to which I understood that technical experts are people who give others the opportunity to enjoy the results of technological progress, in fact, the saviors of the world! And since childhood, I began to work on my first inventions, testing the first developments for weeks. This is good practice - a person from a young age is accustomed to set goals, not to spare time and effort to achieve them, and to remember all the time - no matter how many days, months or even years the project takes, you need to continue to go towards the goal and not give up.

I worked on the computer on weekends - alone. Loneliness gave me freedom of thinking, time to think about various solutions and find the best way. I did not need to convince anyone that this was the most correct path. At the same time, I did not perceive the creation of a computer as work. I thought that the work of an engineer was the construction of radio systems, television devices, navigation systems, but certainly not computers.

It took me a very long time to develop a technically advanced product, and there was nowhere to learn computer technology at that time. Someone will say where I will see an interesting article - this gave food to my inspiration. But there was no special literature, and first of all I had to guess on my own, trying this or that solution until the effect was achieved.

I designed computers on paper. I did not have money to create prototypes, models. I had to perfect every drawing, to realize every idea I could only realize the perfect solution, which would not require rework. In addition, minimalism has become my rule: the fewer parts on a computer, the better. I worked exclusively for myself, not receiving any praise or recognition. The only reward was in my head - I knew that I was doing something that I liked.

The most effective drivers of progress in any project are a passionate desire to achieve a goal and a lack of money. In many ways, my passionate desire to make computer equipment arose from my own interests and from the same lack of money. I could not go and buy something - I needed to develop the same product, only more effective. The presence, and even more so the excess of money only harms. Now, when Apple, founded by me and Steve Jobs, has achieved such success and special people are working to increase our fortune, it’s sometimes difficult for me to remind myself who I really am.

Wage labor

In my third year at college, I got a job at Hewlett-Packard. The innovators of my generation - Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison - often started work without getting an education. But I believed in higher education, so I took a one-year academic leave after the third year to go to HP and earn money. True, the "academician" dragged on, and I graduated several years ago. Then Apple and my name were already known, so I finished my studies under the assumed name Rocky Raccoon (Raccoon) Clark (a combination of my dog’s name and my wife’s maiden name). So I'm the holder of a college diploma in Berkeley in the name of Rocky Raccoon Clark.

I started working with Hewlett-Packard by working on the first keyboard calculator, which made it possible to do without the usual logarithmic line at that time. It was a fantastic device, and I immediately fell in love with my work. By the way, when you get the chance to do what you like more than anything else - in no case lose it. Two years later, our calculators had great computing power and could work with what mathematicians and computer scientists know as reverse block-free recording, that is, make calculations with observance of the steps taken. For example, you can type “5 + 2 x3” on the calculator, and the machine will give the answer “11”, not “21”. In calculators manufactured by Texas Instruments, you had to enter brackets to indicate the order of actions. When we started at Hewlett-Packard to analyze the experience of Texas Instruments, we entered into their calculator a long expression that contained six or seven brackets. I thought: “God, I would never have decided! We must do something about it! »I came up with the fact that the expression should go into the computing unit written down from left to right - and everything worked out! I don’t know why, but I was the only one who was able to drop stereotypes, take a fresh look at the problem and figure out how to solve it.

In parallel with my work at Hewlett-Packard, I carried out many other projects in my free time - not for money, but just out of interest. So I developed a computer game - long before the software even appeared. This game was performed by hardware, not software, by transmitting signals on chips. After this and several more of my developments, many companies began to lure me. But I always refused them, adding that I would like to work at Hewlett-Packard all my life. Hewlett-Packard is a company of engineers, I want to be an engineer all my life, ”I said. I didn’t want to get involved with either management, politics or finished products, I didn’t want to tell others what to do, I just wanted to develop hardware and software. At Hewlett-Packard, engineers were honored and respected by the CEO. In addition, the company allowed the use of its components for private development, for which approval of the supervisor was obtained. The management believed that the development of their own solutions during off-hours hones the intelligence and creativity of employees, and therefore should be encouraged.

“Let's sell it!”

Large companies involved in electronics, one after another, said that they were not interested in computers. Even Hewlett-Packard refused to develop them, although I came to my favorite company and suggested this. But I knew that a good computer should be a device that allows you to enter data into memory and write a program, and that microprocessors have a future. I decided for myself that I must have a computer, even if I have nothing to pay for the house. As usual, I did not buy it, but had to do it myself. From the components of Hewlett-Packard, I assembled a real terminal that could be connected to Arpanet, the prototype of the Internet. Then in the country there were only eight such terminals at different universities, and they were incredibly expensive. I took my TV as a monitor - anyway, I didn’t have the money to pay to watch the broadcasts. It remained to invent a device that allows you to display letters and other characters on the screen in order to exchange information with interlocutors directly. I did not want to equip my computer with a mass of switches and wires leading from the system unit to the monitor. And I came up with a keyboard, based on the idea embodied in the calculator that I developed for Hewlett-Packard. I wrote a special program that translated characters entered into the computer’s memory by the user, and they were displayed on the screen. As a programming language, I chose BASIC, developed by Bill Gates, because I decided that a lot of computer games could be written on it. Steve Jobs saw this and said, “Let's sell it!”

We organized the first Homebrew Computer Club in the United States to bring together computer enthusiasts. We thought it would be convenient for these specialists to simply connect the keyboard of a personal computer instead of hundreds of wires, and sold them for $ 40 a keyboard whose cost was $ 20. Steve Jobs and I sold the most expensive thing we had: I have my own calculator, he is a Volkswagen minivan and founded his own company.

“Now the world will change”

We started from absolute zero, we had nothing - neither money, nor property. Only ideas and a desire to see how it all works, how it
bring to life. Typically, major innovations, new directions of development, new technologies begin with one exceptional technical idea or detail, executed perfectly. But enthusiasm alone is not enough to sell this idea; it needs resources to tell many about it and convinces people of its attractiveness and usefulness; marketing is needed to understand how to present this invention. In our case, we had to convince people that they needed a computer at home. Computers at that time were perceived as devices for the defense industry and large companies. These were monsters who occupied huge rooms, with many strange blinking lights and switches. We had to show future consumers with the help of visual advertising how they will use the computer, how it will fit into their life, how to change it. Sometimes it also takes time to succeed. Perhaps you will create an excellent product that is ahead of its time, and then it may take twenty years before it is appreciated and wanted to purchase. And perhaps you can only realize your idea ten years after its appearance, because it is then that the environment for its application will arise.

One fine day, Steve Jobs called and said that he had received an order for the production of one hundred Apple I computers for $ 50 thousand! It was twice as much as my annual income - a shocking amount! I went around all the departments of Hewlett-Packard and everywhere endorsed the permission to fulfill this order, because I did not want to act unethical. I worked on the project day and night, and sometimes on the verge of sleep and wakefulness I had the best decisions. It was in this most creative state that I came up with the idea that games should be color! I encrypted the colors with binary code - and Apple II already reproduced high-resolution color graphics. I wrote my first BASIC game with hundreds of color variations in just half an hour. Through hardware, I would create it for the rest of my life! It hit me. I told Steve Jobs: “Now that games have become programs, the world will change.”

An order was waiting for us, but for the production of thousands of computers we needed money, and we went to the venture capitalists. Then we were very inexperienced in business and when asked by the investor about the market size for our models, they answered: “A million copies.” "Why a million?" “Well, now there are a million users of shortwave communications, and our computers are replacing such radio communications.” But we still got the money. Now we had a full-fledged company. But here I had an unpleasant surprise: they told me that I should quit with Hewlett-Packard! I, who wanted to be an engineer all my life and worked on computers only at night! I stated that I do not want to run my own business and manage the company, I just want to do development. Steve Jobs gathered all my friends and relatives, and all of them persuaded me: “Agree, this is a great chance, you will have a lot of money!” But I agreed only when they told me: “You don’t have to manage the company. Remain an engineer — only at Apple. ”

Recipe for Success from Steve Wozniak

You need great developers who are able to work quickly and think freely, without stereotypes. Engineers earn far less managers, but for me, engineers are the most important people in the company, because they are the ones who develop new products. They must love their work, possessing strong self-motivation.

You have to conduct many tests to make sure that for the end user your product is simple and easy to use. To test the graphical user interface of our Lisa model, we invited people of various humanitarian professions who are not familiar with the principles of computers, designers, teachers, psychologists. This was not the first usability test.

You must use open architecture. So you will allow many people to work on your product, improve and expand its capabilities. You create a whole community of people working with you. Apple II was very open. Despite the large number of slots installed for various devices and multifunctional programs, each user could improve his computer if he felt that he was missing something.

You must strive for simplicity, to the minimum of components necessary for the operation of your product. Suppose you are planning to build a house and you have an architectural design and building materials. If you are well versed in materials, you can plan your home much better without accumulating too much. I apply the same approach to computers. If you know the architecture of the machine well, the number of parts in it can be halved. For me it was akin to art. I constantly improved first the drawings, then the models. Apple computers were huge machines, each of which was to be designed by a whole group of developers. Today, for example, at Microsoft, more than one hundred specialists can work on one system. But between these periods there was a time when one person could easily develop an entire model of a computer.

People for you should always be more important than technology. Users should be comfortable and comfortable with your product. Look at today's Japanese devices - they have a lot of different buttons, each of which is responsible for which function. And look at the German - they are simple and understandable, because they are designed for people, not for technology. Every product should have a balance of functionality and common sense. If you add a function, think about it, you can not abandon any of the former, which is no longer relevant. Naturally, your product must fulfill all the actions you have stated and be reliable. It is important to find that small difference that will make your work unique and desirable. To do this, it’s worth investing a little emotion in product development. This is what happened with the iPod. In terms of functions and purpose, it is almost identical to those of the MP3 players that everyone else produces, but the iPod is a symbol, and the other is just devices. And, finally, do not write clear plans that would limit the imagination of your developers - just think about the main milestones of the project.

In 1980, Apple II went on public sale and made Jobs and Wozniak millionaires.

For years, Apple II remained the main source of revenue for Apple and provided the company with vitality when its management took on much less profitable projects, such as the ill-fated Apple III and Lisa, who lived short. Thanks to reliable income from Apple II, the company was able to develop a Macintosh, bring it to the market and make it its main technology - over time, the computer that paid for all this was replaced. In this sense, Wozniak can be considered the godfather of "Mac"

In February 1981, Steve Wozniak had an accident on his Beach Bonanza airplane while taking off from Santa Cruz Air Park. As a result, he received retrograde amnesia and temporary anterograde amnesia. He did not remember what had happened and did not know that he was in a plane crash. He also did not remember his hospital stay or the things he did after he was discharged. He was engaged in ordinary affairs, but did not remember them. Woz began collecting pieces of information from different people. He asked his girlfriend, Candy Clark (previously worked at Apple), that he did not end up in any disaster. When she told him about the incident, his short-term memory returned. In fact, Woz and Candy were engaged, they ordered wedding rings in San Diego and flew there after them. Also, Wozniak thanks his computer games for Apple II in his release from amnesia.

Stephen did not return to Apple after the crash. Instead, he married Candy Clark (he called her “Superwoman”), possibly for her achievements in the Olympic kayak in 1976) and returned to the University of California at Berkeley under the name Rocky Clark, Rocky called him a dog, and Clark is his wife’s maiden name, where he received his degree in 1986. In 1983, he decided to return to the Apple development team, and he needed the position of engineer and incentive element for the company.

In 1982 and 1983, Wozniak sponsored two national rock festivals, The US Festival, which were dedicated to the evolving technology and community of music, computers, television and people. They were a combination of a technology exhibition and a rock festival. Rock festivals such as Motley Crue, Ozzy Osbourne, Judas Priest, Scorpions, Van Halen, U2, etc. took part in the festivals.

Woz and Candy divorced in 1987. At that time, they had three children, two boys and a girl. Later, during a graduate meeting, he renewed his relationship with Suzanne Mulkern, the former leader of the cheerleaders (support group). They married in 1990 and divorced in 2000.

Careers Outside Apple

12 years after the company was founded, on February 6, 1987, Wozniak left Apple again, this time forever. Despite this, he is still listed as an employee there and even receives a salary, and also a block of shares remained with him. Wozniak then founded the new CL9 company, which developed remote controls. It launched the first universal remote controls on the market. Out of spite, Jobs threatened his suppliers to stop business with Wozniak, otherwise they would lose business with Apple.

He found other suppliers, instead of those with whom he had worked for four years, but was disappointed in his closest friend.

Wozniak went into teaching (he taught fifth-grade students) and charitable activities in the field of education. After being fired from Apple, Wozniak transferred all his money for the technology program for the Los Gatos school district (the district Steve lives in and where his children attend school). Unuson (Unite Us in Song) is an organization that Steve founded to organize two National Festivals, which is now mainly used by him for his educational and philanthropic projects.

In 1985, Ronald Reagan presented Wozniak with a national technology medal.

In September 2000, Wozniak entered the National Hall of Fame of the Inventors.

In 2001, he founded Wheels Of Zeus to create wireless GPS technology that was designed to “help ordinary people find ordinary things.” In 2002, he joined the board of directors of Ripcord Networks Inc., which included all Apple graduates. Later that year, Wozniak became a member of the board of directors at Danger Inc., the creator of Hip Tor’a (aka SideKick from T-Mobile). In May 2004, Wozniak received an honorary doctorate from the University of North Carolina for his contribution to the field of personal computers.

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The co-founder of the world's most expensive company - Apple - and the developer of the first commercially successful personal computer explained to RBC why people will not become immortal, will not turn into cyborgs and will not give jobs to robots.

Steve Wozniak (Photo: Anton Sergienko / RBC)

Steve Wozniak is one of the most famous figures in the IT industry. In 1976, he founded Apple, along with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne, who soon launched the first model of the computer of the same name (it is believed that Wozniak developed the hardware for the computer almost alone). Now Steve Wozniak works as an engineer and scientist, working with a number of companies and non-profit associations . He is also known as a futurologist: for example, back in 1982, Wozniak was able to predict the emergence of laptops (laptops) in the future. He is now considered one of the leading experts in the field of technology development. Steve Wozniak visited Moscow on April 4, 2018 to participate in the AMOKONF-2018 conference organized by amoCRM.

“I am sincerely sorry that the development of computers has led to the emergence of surveillance tools”

- Mr. Wozniak, what technologies do you think will change the world in the coming years?

- I can’t say that I know some secret technologies - you and I have heard hundreds of times about all the most important technologies to this day. As Moore’s Law (observation by Intel founder Gordon Moore, according to which the number of transistors that fit on a chip doubles every two years. - RBC) approaches its limit, more and more attention will be paid not to hardware, but to the development of new programs, optimization of algorithms, data processing and everything that will allow computer technologies to bring more benefits to people. This, in particular, is a blockchain that allows you to completely monitor all actions of users within the system, as well as the payment channels built on it, in a completely different way than before. This is also machine learning (a class of methods for creating artificial intelligence, the characteristic feature of which is not the direct solution of a problem, but training in the process of solving many similar problems. - RBC), which will play an increasing role in our daily lives.

But any benefit has a flip side - society becomes “plastic”: we are more and more alike, we are less and less creative, individual, independent. Even the houses we live in are basically the same. And the digital revolution makes us more and more technology dependent and somewhat more alike.

- How well-founded are the fears that Big Brother, using "big data", will know literally everything about us? States, companies and other stakeholders are already actively monitoring people through their own electronic devices.

- I consider this problem very important, very serious. And I am sincerely sorry that the development of computers, to which I had a hand, has led to the appearance of such surveillance tools that many people don’t even suspect. I have always been committed to liberal values \u200b\u200band, as you know, I am one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization that, in particular, protects people's rights to prevent companies from providing their personal information to third parties. The constitutions of various countries determine what the government can and cannot do. And the legislation of many countries enshrines the right of people to privacy - no one has the right, say, to listen to telephone conversations and watch what they do at home, without court authorization. And I do not like that modern technical capabilities make it easy to violate what the law is trying to guarantee us. One day, people will have to start the struggle for their rights - to stand up and tell the state: it won’t do that.

“Will cybercrimes become a much more dangerous threat in the future than they are now?”

- Cybercrimes are becoming increasingly widespread and dangerous from year to year, and in the near future the situation will only worsen. I think that we should quickly limit the possibilities of their commission - as happened earlier with other types of crimes. You need to have time to do this before the situation gets out of hand. Of course, it will never be possible to nullify the possibility that someone will hack into the network you use, steal valuable information from there, your money, personal data or otherwise harm people. As it is impossible to reduce to zero, say, cases of car theft. But over time, we can, for example, build a blockchain system in which any serious action will require confirmation from users. Such systems will be almost impossible to crack. Now they are impossible due to technical limitations, but I am sure that sooner or later they will appear. However, for them to work, we will gradually have to rebuild the entire Internet. But it will become truly safe.

Tops and roots

Stephen Gary Wozniak was born on August 11, 1950 in San Jose (California). Owned a 45% stake in Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.), but so far Wozniak has less than 1% of the company's securities. In 1981, he had a plane crash, after which he withdrew from participation in the management of Apple. Subsequently, Wozniak was involved in a number of projects, most of which did not become commercially successful. In 2002, Wozniak became a co-founder of Wheels of Zeus (“Wheels of Zeus”) - a “physical reality search engine” that would help people find the items they need everyday. The project’s technology used GPS tags that could be attached to a suitcase or keys, and a special search device that could track the location of these items. The project managed to attract $ 6 million from venture companies, but could not get it. In 2006, he stopped working. Later, Wozniak participated in projects such as Acquicor Technology, Fusion-io and Primary Data, most of which he was involved in the management of scientific developments. But so far, all these projects have not turned into a large-scale business.

Wozniak was not officially fired from Apple and continues to be listed among employees, receiving a salary of $ 120 thousand per year from the company and appearing at some official events. As Wozniak himself explains, under the terms of his contract with the company, the only person who could fire him was Steve Jobs.

In 2017, Wozniak’s fortune was estimated at $ 100 million, a modest figure compared to $ 11 billion owned by his former partner Steve Jobs at the time of his death in 2011. However, Wozniak himself does not consider money the measure of success in life. “I do not invest. “I don’t do such things,” Wozniak said in an interview with Fortune last year. “I don’t want to be near money, because it can destroy my values.”

“We cannot make an artificial copy of the brain”

- Many people are afraid that robots will soon take away their jobs. You used to talk a lot about the dangers of artificial intelligence, but last year you sharply changed your mind and started saying that robots will bring a lot of benefit to humanity. Why?

- Yes, that is right. I used to think that robots would quickly take people away from work, forcing them out onto the sidelines of society. But, following the development in this area, I realized that artificial intelligence can never completely replace a person. I look around and see a high level of employment. Automation of labor began 200 years ago, when the first factories appeared in Manchester, which sewed cheap clothes using machines. And even then, people were afraid that the cars would take their work, but this did not happen.

Steve Wozniak (Photo: Tony Avelar / Bloomberg News)

Yes, robots will take jobs from people in some areas, but in other areas, robotics and other digital disciplines themselves will create new jobs. For example, you will need specialists who will program robots, develop their new models, and so on. I am sure that society will always find an opportunity to give people work, to benefit from any new technology for society itself.

- Many futurologists believe that our generation will already encounter technological singularity when technological progress becomes so fast and complex that it turns out to be inaccessible to people's understanding. What will happen next - people will merge with robots into some new life forms, become a kind of cyborgs?

- On a very limited scale. I do not share the enthusiastic views of people who believe that man and machine will merge into a single organism. Of course, we will be able to place nanodevices in our body that will solve various health problems. But in fact, this will be the development of long-known things - such nanodevices can deliver, say, antibiotics and other drugs to the body. But in order to penetrate the sphere that truly makes us human - into our brain, into our thoughts, into our memories ... In order to bring something new into the brain, we must first understand how all its processes work. I attended psychology courses in Berkeley and was especially interested in how memory was organized. I can say that no one knows this yet: we do not have a clear idea of \u200b\u200bhow the brain works, how it works, and we cannot make an artificial copy of it that could think. While all this is not there, there can be no question of any merger of man and machine.

“But what about digital immortality?” Will people be able to live forever due to the fact that their identity can be rewritten on another medium?

- You mean something like what is shown in the movie “Excellence” (the 2014 film, where the hero Johnny Depp creates his digital copy before his death. - RBC)? This is the same problem as with the singularity - before transferring a person’s personality to a new body or computer, and one that allows this person to maintain consciousness, we must first adequately read the person’s memory from his brain. Can we do this? No, we can’t - and for a very long time all this will remain only a fun idea from science fiction novels and films. And even if we understand how memories are encoded in the brain, imagine what mountains of information we will need to read from the brain of each person, without damaging or losing anything. In the foreseeable future, it is impossible to imagine that we will be able to solve such a difficult task.

- What do you think about space tourism and private space launches? Will the dreams of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk come true soon?

- It is difficult to give any exact dates. Industry development depends on many factors, and the main one is cost. How many people can afford a tourist trip into space?

I would very much like for Elon Musk to be able to carry out his plan - to launch spacecraft with two hundred people on board: that is, to make commercially viable flights that would be comparable in price to traveling by plane. I would like many people and companies to work on making space travel affordable. If I could board a ship and fly to Mars with a one-way ticket, I would. I think that in the future, people will be able to move to colonies on other planets as part of projects by NASA and other space agencies, as well as as part of private projects. But do I think that people will move from Earth en masse? No, I do not think so.

I'm not at all sure that humanity will survive to interstellar travel. Imagine: for a spaceship to move at near-light speed and reach other stars, it needs tremendous energy. If we learn how to receive such energy, we will probably quickly destroy ourselves in a war or other disaster.

“Cryptocurrencies and blockchain applications have already become part of reality”

- What about electric cars and self-driving cars? These technologies are already becoming part of everyday life.

- The transition from conventional to electric cars is most likely inevitable: now many states have set dates from which they will ban cars with a gasoline engine. But the designers of self-driving cars will have to solve a lot of problems until the moment when such cars finally become really safe. I note that [now] most of these models are not autonomous in the true sense of the word - for example, Tesla calls the model that she developed “completely self-governing”, but this is not so - you still need a person who sits in the cockpit and looks, whether the autopilot is doing the right thing.

Steve Wozniak (Photo: David McNew / Reuters)

- In an interview with USA Today three years ago, you predicted that IT companies that currently exist (for example, Apple, Google and Facebook) will dominate the market in 2075 as well. Are we moving towards a world where IT startups have no chance of growing into a new Apple?

- I didn’t mean that they will definitely dominate, I said that they will still be on the market, remaining large and successful. But something like what happened with IBM may happen to them. At one time, IBM was as huge a company as Apple is today. Now she takes a more modest place, but still earns a lot of money. So there are always chances to build a new Apple.

- How can we distinguish really promising IT technologies from marketing bubbles? For example, are cryptocurrencies a bubble or part of our future?

- It is very difficult to understand, especially if you have any personal interest in the success of the technology and, therefore, emotions about it. It all depends on whether the technology can survive the initial surge of interest in it. Many cryptocurrencies and blockchain applications have already become part of reality. They have not survived the initial rise of interest, and now their creators and supporters will have to work to ensure that they become compatible with the existing monetary system and bring people some benefits - for example, they allow quick payments.

Household Futurism

From time to time, Steve Wozniak makes forecasts regarding the development of technology. For example, in 2014, Wozniak predicted the dangers associated with the fact that more and more companies stored their data in cloud services - in his opinion, in the future this could lead to numerous problems associated with the loss of control over information, including legal: “If you use the cloud, you already own nothing.”

It is noteworthy that the engineer’s opinion on some issues changes over time - so, back in 2015, Wozniak scared of the dangers that artificial intelligence poses: “Like many, including Stephen Hawking and Elon Mask, I consider the future frightening and sad for humanity . If we build cars to do everything for us, sooner or later they will learn to think faster and get rid of slow people to make companies more efficient. ” However, last year Wozniak announced that he had such fears and now believes that artificial intelligence will make our life better.

Last year, in an interview with CNBC, he predicted that bitcoin would eventually become a better standard of value than gold, since the theoretical number of bitcoins is finite (no more than 21 million), and therefore they will not face devaluation.

In an April 2017 interview with USA Today, he made a series of predictions about how the world will look in 2075. According to Wozniak, the housing problem will be solved by new cities that will be built from scratch even in the middle of the desert. Artificial intelligence will become ubiquitous - people will communicate with the interactive walls of houses, medical devices will give recommendations and prescribe medications without the help of doctors. Earthlings will create colonies on Mars, but it is unlikely by the end of the century to establish contact with extraterrestrial intelligence.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said that the business world has reached such a stage that he and Steve Jobs would have failed a job interview at any large IT company. In today's world, no one could create a company like Apple in a garage. He said this in an interview with the Australian publication The Australian Financial Review.

One of the main myths of the IT industry is that Jobs and Wozniak created Apple in Jobs's parent garage in California. And although Wozniak recently stated that "the tale is very embellished over the years," the garage legend has become a kind of synonym for the idea that any enthusiast could change the world of IT technology. Now it’s hard to imagine such a thing. "The opportunity to create a large company overnight still exists, but we founded Apple at such a unique moment in time when one person could assemble all the parts and build a computer alone. Those days are in the past," Wozniak told.

According to him, Apple, having reached enormous size, has entered such a phase of development that it has lost the ability to present innovations. Most of the innovative features of apple gadgets that have been introduced in recent years have been borrowed from other, smaller companies. However, this does not mean that the company can no longer surprise anyone. “The larger your company, the more time, money and effort you spend on producing products and software to meet the needs of millions of people. However, all this naturally slows down the process,” explained the co-founder of the IT giant.

Steve Wozniak noted that modern IT corporations are not inclined to hire, for example, Markov Zuckerbergs, since people such as the founder of Facebook are out of common educational standards and familiar ideas about career advancement. According to him, the resumes of those hired by Apple, Google or Microsoft suggest that these people are likely to never be able to bring a revolutionary idea and change the world of technology.

“The inventor will develop the idea regardless of whether they take it to a large company or not. The process itself is important for him. I look at the requirements for work experience and education that are needed to get into Apple, and I understand: Steve Jobs and me would never be hired ... in our company, "admitted Steve Wozniak.

In addition, he lamented that modern people often use smart gadgets instead of thinking for themselves: "It's time to think about how to use smart devices that can think for you." In his opinion, "there is no doubt that computers will take over humanity." If before the co-founder of Apple did not want to hear the voices of those who warned about the possible superiority of artificial intelligence over human, now he is ready to admit that he was mistaken, since the threat really hangs over humanity.

"I, like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, say that the future of mankind is frightening and very bad. If we came up with all these devices to do everything for us, naturally, they will start to think faster than us. Will we be gods? Or will we "Or become like ants that you can step on and not notice? I don’t know. But when I think that in the future I can become a pet of a smart car, I somehow start to treat my dog \u200b\u200bwith special warmth," said Wozniak.

Stephen Wozniak English - Stephen Wozniak) - an American businessman and computer developer, he is the "second" founder of Apple "Apple"). Wozniak was born in 1950 on August 11 in the American town of San Jose. He is rightly considered one of the few fathers of the revolution in the field of personal computers. Actually, it was he who made a significant contribution to the invention of such devices in the 70s of the last century.

Steve Jobs English - Steve Jobs) is an entrepreneur from America who has received the widest recognition around the world as a genius in the era of information technology. The "first" co-founder and chairman of the board of directors, as well as chief executive officer of Apple. The highest official of the PIXAR film studio and one of the organizers is all Steve Jobs. Born in 1955 on February 24 in San Francisco.

To distinguish between Wozniak and Jobs, because their names were similar, except that Wozniak was called Stephen, Jobs - Steven, for the first they came up with a large number of pseudonyms. This and “Woz”, “Wizard of Woz” and “The Woz”, and “iWoz - in the likeness of the names of products from Apple, such as iFon, iBook, iPad. “Another Steve” - this nickname “stuck to Steve Wozniak at Apple Computer.

They met during a summer job at Hewlett – PackardHP). A few years later, when Jobs didn’t go to school, they have the idea to create their own business during the next meeting. Jobs was then 20 years old.

BlueBox or Blue Box

While studying at the university, Steve Wozniak accidentally read an article in a magazine called “Esquire” about people who can make phone calls around the world thanks to hacking phone codes. In a magazine, these people were called "telephone freaks." It was September 1971.

Sound simulation with a specific frequency for the tone signal and allowed to capture the telephone line for their needs. Later it turned out that around such a hack there is a separate subculture of phreakers. One of these phreakers was a man named Captain Crunch. He discovered an amazing fact - the whistle, which is in packages of oatmeal, which was placed there by manufacturers to stimulate sales, makes the very sound with the tone that is needed to crack the telephone line.

For further dialing, Captain Crunch made a device that he called the Blue Box). Job and Wozniak got the idea to create such a device - at that time they were engaged in the maintenance of air conditioners. The first prototype that Wozniak managed to create was not able to give reliable tones and was not working. Then, he created a fully digital prototype that was able to reproduce frequencies with the right accuracy, and this time it worked out. The device was fully functional!

In the beginning, friends only had fun and jokes on their minds - they started calling everyone on the phones to play answerers, but very soon Steve Jobs seriously thought about the commercial side of this invention. Soon, this approach yielded results. They organized what is called artisanal production and began to successfully sell their invention - the “blue box”. The buyers were mostly students and locals. They did not dare to sell “boxes” to the general public, because such a business was risky because of its illegality.

Approximately $ 75-80 cost one such invention, but a little later Steve Wozniak figured out how to make 15-20 “boxes” at once - the use of a printed circuit board was a good solution, which made it possible to achieve costs of 1 unit of “production” of $ 40. 1 BlueBox brought them $ 110, which they shared equally. Having sold about 100 of these boxes, they managed to make some good money. Then unpleasant incidents began with the police and customers, and it was decided to cover up risky entrepreneurship. It is possible that it was these “boxes” that showed Jobs that there is not only joy from electronics, but also good profits.

And so began the story of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs ...