Steve Jobs: Billion Dollar Hippy Page #2

---

and I liked that about him.

At college, Jobs met Daniel Kottke.

Jobs quickly dropped out

of his course

and lost no time tuning in.

We both got copies of this new book,

Be Here Now.

It was written by Ram Dass

and all about his trip to India,

searching for a holy man who could

explain what psychedelics do.

It was fascinating for me

and for Steve also and so that was

the basis of our friendship.

Jobs became a hippy,

pursuing paths

to personal liberation.

He and Kottke took their own

trip to India,

and LSD, as this

extraordinary tape reveals.

He spent long periods at a commune

on a farm in Oregon.

We spent a whole week harvesting

apples and, while we were at it,

we decided we would just fast

on apples and see how that worked

and, um...

it makes you very light-headed,

cos it's just like sugar.

Jobs was inspired by

the counter culture

to believe society was there

to be reshaped.

As near as I can tell,

Steve Jobs always had that ambition

to change the world.

And he expected to do

that by empowering, um...

everybody.

But Jobs didn't share all the views

of his counter culture buddies.

Many hippies saw computers

as tools of oppression,

produced by big businesses

to extend the sway

of other big businesses.

Jobs, though, had grown up

experimenting with electronics

at home.

People who've done that

have another angle on, er,

whether technology is bad or good.

They think that technology

that pushes them around is bad

and technology that they can

push in their own direction

they think is good.

While he was still at school,

Jobs worked at one of the big

computer companies near his home in

Silicon Valley.

And he made a friend

who would shape his destiny.

We talked about electronics.

I said, "I design computers.

"I can, you know, do any of them."

He had worked at Hewlett Packard

and built himself what's called

a frequency counter.

So we hit it off.

Despite his hippy outlook,

Jobs had a ruthless streak.

He was asked by the fledgling

computer company Atari

to design a new Breakout game.

Jobs asked Wozniak

to do it in just four days,

telling his friend

they would share the fee.

He presented it like we were

splitting the money 50/50,

but actually, it was, you know,

probably a different story.

Wozniak worked round the clock

to deliver the goods

but later discovered Jobs

had paid him considerably less

than half the sum

he had received from Atari.

You didn't think,

"I can't trust this guy"?

or "He's a bit too sharp for me"?

Steve could have just said,

"I need money to buy into

this commune up in Oregon."

Have you never harboured any

bitterness that he might have?

I don't harbour bitterness.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes