Steve Jobs was friends in college with Robert Friedland[0], a mining billionaire (self-made, his story is fascinating), and it is rumored that Jobs learned some of his persuasion skills from observing Friedland. There are some videos of Friendland online, and though he is a bit of a huckster, he is a great speaker.
A self-made mining billionaire? Indeed that is fascinating. He must have been working really hard down in those mines to make that much without any help.
You could play this game with virtually any billionaire[0]. Everyone who gets that wealthy does it by leveraging other people. That's the whole point of forming a company. Self made in this context obviously means did it from the ground up.
The fact is, he started some speculative mining ventures that found massive mineral deposits. That's self made.
[0]: Marc Rich might be an exception. His company was basically him and a telephone for a while, but he was still leveraging his relationships with other commodities firms, which are themselves massive employers.
>the Connection Machine has been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, where it is currently on view as part of the exhibition Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959–1989.
This is a nicely designed machine and and all, but man that MoMA exhibit is a disappointment. I went to MoMA on a lark while in NYC without knowing the exhibit existed. But once I got there and was in other exhibits I couldn't stop thinking about how they might find ways to bring everything beautiful about the artistry in computing to the masses that don't know how to see it. Then I walked through an odd grab bag of out of context things that've existed in the vicinity of computing and seem to be selected for aesthetics that will allow visual arts people stare at them profoundly even though they're experiencing them in a vaccum.
Then I spent the rest of my time there wondering if it and all the other exhibits were inaccessible on purpose.
That's disappointing. I could imagine a display of visually interesting computers that also went deeply into the rationale of why these designs also made sense from a technical perspective. I haven't seen the exhibit but sounds like they're missing that element.
It is exasperating to hear you complaining because an art show didn't treat tech in the depth you would have liked. The focus was works made by artists (not "exhibits") and it sounds like the GP is just not the target audience for that. It is certainly true that contemporary art's take on tech is shallow and more about a vibe or an aesthetic than about, let's say, rigorous exposition or exploration of technicalities.
As a person with a computer background who also has an MA in fine art, I often find that what happens to be on show in local galleries is "not for me". A show by Lucy Raven et al, for example, made a fuss about LUTs in image processing as if they were some kind of dark art. This can be a frustrating feeling until I remember that no creative expression can possibly address everyone. Once I remember that, I don't feel the need to write a dismissive review of the artist's work; it is a relief to be able to move on to search for material (artistic or technical) which is more stimulating.
I think the GP's experience with the MoMA show can be understood in terms of the Gell-Mann effect: mass culture treats a topic you know well, and it seems shallow to you. Is everything the museum shows equally shallow, when seem from the "right" perspective? I don't know what that would even mean.
We know that the Gell-Mann effect isn't really an argument that the newspaper trivializes and distorts everything to the point that it does more harm than good.
It feels important not to get cynical and come to a damning conclusion about the art world based on similar reasoning.
>I think the GP's experience with the MoMA show can be understood in terms of the Gell-Mann effect
You're probably right, not a bad analogy. Over years of cultural osmosis and sometimes being told outright, I came to understand that I'm a nerd what doesn't get art and that it's some sort of personal failing. I thought the computing exhibit might be my chance to have the kind of experience that the reverence for art tells me I'm missing out on.
Over time since then I decided that if I see something as a skilled execution of an idea not worth anything more than a "huh, neat" and moving on, then to stop letting the presentation and culture tell me there is something more and just keep walking.
I've always found Starry Night beautiful and seeing it in person was actually an experience. I was under the delusion that I "should" have had even one tenth of that reaction to literally anything else in the place. But there's a reason it's the last stop on the way through.
I have seen MOMA exhibits--and indeed a lot of their permanent design collection--that exists at the intersection of form and function. And, in general, I find that a useful lens for design. I don't find chairs that look "cool" but are horribly uncomfortable especially interesting. And I'd feel similarly about a unique computer design that overheated.
The aesthetic industrial design of the Connection Machines is brilliant and iconic, and among the great stories around Thinking Machines.
I think the Cray-2 was its contemporary for a while, and also has some interesting design work (as do the earlier Crays), with a striking form that follows&exposes the construction.
Does the fastcompany article title “The Female Supercomputer Designer Who Inspired Steve Jobs” make an undue spectacle of the designer being female? I think titles like these imply that it’s so shocking that a female inspired Jobs and/or did supercomputer design work that her name & individual identity matter less than her gender. They should just put Tamiko Thiel in the title.
I was thinking the same thing, and I honestly can't tell. Either way, she had one of the toughest jobs I can imagine and navigated it with badass-tier bravado: that's really what the article should emphasize. Instead of emphasizing the title of "female" over "supercomputer designer", maybe they should have just lead with the Steve Jobs hook (as much as I despise him) and let the reader draw their own conclusions on Thiel.
It's worse than that. Not only does it make a spectacle of them being female, it implies their accomplishments are only notable because they are female, that those accomplishments would not be special if performed by a man. It's exploitative and infantilizing at the same time.
In the 1980s, I imagine that female supercomputer designers were incredibly rare. For one to rise up through the ranks against the tides of sexism in that era and achieve something that ultimately impacted Steve Jobs...yeah, I want to know about that vis-à-vis her being a woman since her experience and achievement is relatively unique to the era.
Why do you consider her gender in the headline a “spectacle” rather than a simple statement of fact? If the headline read “artist” or “Stanford grad” or “Japanese-American” or “MIT alum” rather than “female” would you feel the same way?
While I didn't get as triggered by the inclusion as the OP, I do have to say that out of the example labels you gave, the only one I would consider a good comparison is "Japanese-American" as she did not choose her gender, ethnicity, nor nationality.
Industrial designers may have more influence on the public, press, and execs because their work is immediately visible, but top engineers have huge influence on later engineers. I know more about Seymour Cray, Burton Smith, Danny Hillis, etc. than I do about Dieter Rams and Hartmut Esslinger.
I hate it, but there's some truth to this. Good products cost money, and good design attracts attention, which brings in cash. Without Jobs' attention to aesthetics, I think it's fair to say we wouldn't have (for one example) the M1 chip today.
> So she began to talk to the team’s engineers, to learn about the metaphors they used to describe the nature of the machine. That’s when she remembered her hypercube logo, which became the model for her industrial design.
