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Tech's Enduring Great-Man Myth
An anonymous reader writes: Did Steve Jobs deserve his reputation as a brilliant inventor? Since Jobs's death in 2011, Elon Musk has been thrust into the spotlight as a man who can shake the pillars of tech. Does he deserve that reputation? MIT's Technology Review argues that media and the industry have a habit of making legends out of notable leaders, while failing to acknowledge all the support that allowed them to execute their ideas. From the article: "Musk's success would not have been possible without, among other things, government funding for basic research and subsidies for electric cars and solar panels. Above all, he has benefited from a long series of innovations in batteries, solar cells, and space travel." While it may be fun to compare him to Iron Man, the myth has its perils: "The problem with such portrayals is not merely that they are inaccurate and unfair to the many contributors to new technologies. By warping the popular understanding of how technologies develop, great-man myths threaten to undermine the structure that is actually necessary for future innovations."
Pick any subject, there will be the famous in that field the masses of the same bent idolise (or hate). Some are deserved, others are mostly salesmen. Tech, sports, soap operas, movies, music, even no-mark celebrities will have millions following their public profile, creating emotional attachments that don't actually exist. This is what fills the void left by abandoning religion.
Great at claiming credit - that is about it.
Or even in place constantly in the public eye, like the movies. Except for a few movie buffs no one can name the assistant art director or the sound editor. You really think George Lucas personally coded up the spec for Lucas Theater Sound after slogging in the anechoic chamber for months on end? People at asst art director level get paid about 200$ per shift or so. Is that true? Is the pay that low?
Or in politics, or in sales, or in coding....
[Quick question about the word "only". English is not my first language, and I get confused about the proper use of only. For example in the subject line, the word only applies to what? To the verb happens or to the phrase "in tech"?]
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Media which makes its living by communicting to masses of people using short time, low attention narratives has to hook into themes it knows all viewers already understand and respond to. These are themes everyone is just genetically pre-wired to understand.
Young, high status male searches for and mates with most beautiful woman.
Evil tribe attempts to destroy us but instead is itself destroyed, thanks to acts of courage and selflessness.
Singularly great man brings knowledge, light and power to the masses.
That why MSM sucks.
From the post: "Musk's success would not have been possible without, among other things, government funding for basic research and subsidies for electric cars and solar panels. Above all, he has benefited from a long series of innovations in batteries, solar cells, and space travel."
But was Musk the only one to receive those subsidies and benefit from those innovation? He stood on the shoulder of giants, but he was the one to make it a reality. That is the difference between the average and the great IMHO.
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
Journalists are lazy - hence 1 hero not 100 when it's a massive group effort.
The people repeating the "Steve Jobs was the Greatest" mantra over and over are the Apple haters who really feel the need for their predictions that Apple will fail without him to be true. Any moment now.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Watch the movie pirates of silicon valley and you will realize that Steve Jobs was a business man... not an inventor... Wozniak was the inventor... Steve Jobs deserves zero credit for any invention
It happens everywhere, in every field. Great statesmen the same treatment, famous activists, artists, etc. as well. Even Martin Luther King and Gandhi were highly fallible human beings who would probably not withstand the scrutiny of the public eye in the 21st century if they were active today. Why do I use them? They're secular saints.
On some level, people need giants and heroes. It's just part of who we are. It's why monarchy and quasi-monarchy like presidential systems are the norm for political systems, not purer republics and democracy. The public naturally wants to believe that great people are running things and leading the way. The alternative is subtly felt as chaos.
If anything makes the public less able to understand what goes into technology, it's the media making it seem like so many products are successful. If the public actually knew the truth that, for example, the overwhelming majority of app developers are working day jobs or living near poverty, that would help to understand that this stuff is **hard** even when it's just making apps, let alone electric cars.
I mean come on, throughout history LEADERS get all the credit, because they unite the peons to do their bidding while they reap the rewards.
...not to be confused with the great Mythical Man-Month, which is a completely different technical myth that never seems to die.
Is he arguing against a straw man? I don't think anyone would seriously argue that Jobs invented anything that (a) wasn't just combining existing tech and (b) probably wouldn't have come along a few years later anyway. Jobs did it first (sort of) and did it better. He wasn't an Edison, he was just a guy (a) with a ton of resource behind him and (b) with good taste and moderate foresight. Nobody would say he was an Edison. We don't live in an age when an Edison gets rich and famous. We live in an age when someone who can combine and weave together a ton of existing technologies into just the right consumer product can get rich and famous.
It is obvious that a company's success also depends on the efforts of many anonymous workers and governments. However, that doesn't alter the fact that visionary leaders are needed to inspire them. I can imagine that, statistically, all large companies have, on the average, an equally competent workforce. These statistics don't apply to the small group of top management, let alone the CEO. These are the people that set out the company course. Therefore, I refuse to believe e.g. Apple's success is purely coincidental. Same holds for Virgin, Tesla etc. Whether the personal adoration and cult status is desirable, is another matter altogether, but the importance of a CEO goes without saying.
You usually don't hear about those who are great at tech but bad at business.
A bunch of kids are playing together by building a tower out of legos. One of them places a final brick to complete the tower. The parents & teachers rush over and congratulate the one kid for placing that final brick and shower her with candy & praise. The rest of the kids are asked by their parents, "why couldn't they try harder and be like that kid?"
If there's anything that Steve Jobs wasn't it's "inventor". I wouldn't restrict his role to "sales guy" as perhaps Bill Gates was, but he had other merits. He realized that design (which includes user experience and user interface and is more technical skill than the artistic skill of designing a nice case) can be more important than any technical invention.
Jobs, even Apple as a company, never invented anything. Their merit is taking some existing niche technology and making it usable for the first time.
Zuckerberg, on the other hand, I'd give credit as an actual inventor. because creating a website with basic facebook features is well within range of what a technical guy could design and develop singlehanded.
bickerdyke
Yes, "he didn't build that".
Fantastic. Another variation on "you didn't build that". This sort of rationalization has been going on for as long as the human race has been civilized -- the underachiever (or unlucky, or oppressed... choose your favorite flavor) making himself feel better by trivializing the achievements of exceptional people. If ANYONE can stand on the shoulders of giants, why aren't more people doing it?
I don't think that people actually in the industry believe that Jobs or Musk invented anything. What they did was to bring things together, provide the organization and the motivation and the vision to bring a product to market. It's an entirely different skill set than that of an "inventor".
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The Great-Man Myth may well be a bit of a myth, but there also must be some truth to it. Rather than describe Steve Jobs as an "inventor," I think he could better be described as an "innovator." I'm not sure he invented much of anything: he didn't invent the Apple I and Apple II (Wozniak did), and he didn't invent the GUI (Xerox Parc and others did.) Instead, he brought emerging technology together in an innovative way to create new categories of products such as the Macintosh, iPod, iPad, and iPhone. Each of those were composed of a set of inventions created by others but brought together under Jobs' direction. Likewise, he didn't invent computer animation at Pixar (which was already doing that when he acquired it), but he guided Pixar through the process of creating the first feature-length computer-animated movie.
So, for a serial innovator like Jobs or Musk, there seems to be an element of greatness in the fact that they have a vision and organize others to implement that vision. But its likely that they get more than their share of the limelight in the process of the media simplifying and glamorizing their stories for consumption by the masses. Edison actively encouraged that sort of thing in the media of the time, by promoting the idea that he was the great inventor, whereas he actually ran the first industrial research laboratory - which itself is one of his primary inventions.
In the case of the Apple I and II, Wozniak seems to get his fair share of credit since he did all of the engineering himself, but for other things, a team of people is involved, and it's rare for them to get much credit. Except in the case of the first Macintosh, where the designers got to sign the inside of the case.
So, like most myths, there's some truth to the Greate-Man Myth, though it's also, of course, a bit of a "myth."
... always taste sour
Why don't we compare two "steves" of the silicon valley? Ballmer vs Jobs
Regarding the 'supports", both of them got all the 'supports' they needed
Now tell me why, Jobs had done so much better than Ballmer?
As for MIT's Technology Reviews, I've noticed that the quality of the articles in the rag has tanked in recent years
Leaders always get too much credit when things go well and too much blame when they go badly.
Let's use a sports analogy. Think about your favorite football team. Everybody worships the quarterback and he's clearly the guy running the show but he's just one of 11 guys. If the receiver drops the ball or the lineman misses a block it doesn't matter how good the quarterback is. The quarterback can do everything right but the other guys still have to perform. The good quarterback can make a team better but it still requires the whole team to be talented and work together.
Think about how much blame the president gets for the state of the economy even though he really has very little influence or ability to influence the economy. But he's the guy in charge that we know about so people think he's brilliant when things are going well and he gets far too much blame when they aren't. It's not really fair but it is what happens. Too much credit and too much blame.
Guys like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs set the direction but the most important thing they do is deciding who to hire. After that it is mostly out of their hands. The people they hire have to perform. If they hired the right people the company has a good chance to do well. If they hire the wrong people they are probably screwed. Private equity guys when they are deciding whether to invest in a company the #1 thing they care about is WHO is on the team running the company. Sure the business model still has to make sense but a good team can make a mediocre business work. A bad team can make a great business tank.
Bitch, please. That's BUDDHIST vegan cock.
Leader types just get all the credit because they are out in front taking the risks and enduring the public.
However, they would be nothing without the legions of support behind them.
I, personally, am a follower, I accept this. I know that I will never be "successful" in that sense but I am comfortable in my anonymity.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
It doesn't matter what industry segment you look at, the "leaders" always take the credit for other's work. Some guy on the shop floor saved $2 million a year in manufacturing costs? The shop floor manager gets the bonus.
Some engineer came up with a new chemical dye process for VLSI manufacturing? The department head gets the bonus.
Some programmer worked their ass off re-writing the accounting system to correct bugs and improve performance? The director of accounting gets the bonus.
It is the nature of the "rich and powerful" to be greedy fucks about the bonuses and the fame.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
What's the point of this article? Nobody thinks Jobs or Musk was abandoned by their parents on some deserted island, and was raised by wolves but somehow managed to discover calculus and electromagnetism. The difference between guys like Jobs and Musk versus your average engineer or lab scientist is having a compelling vision of the future and doing what it takes to achieve it. I don't idolize either one, but I'm not going to deny that they're a breed apart.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Every single innovation, small or large, originated in the mind of a single individual.
As mentioned in a separate post this elevation of a single person is not limited to tech. It is also not a recent thing. Isaac Newton is given credit for all kinds of things without mentioning any of his contemporaries or predecessors. Newton had friends in politics and someone pushing his book and theories. We could say the same about virtually everyone. Okay, maybe we could argue exceptions like Socrates, Archimedes, Da Vinci, and Einstein.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The gist of this article is that since things have been invented before, no one can be considered great any more unless everything they do has never been done before.
I guess there will be no more great people.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You're wrong, because Innovation! Progress! (like the progressive filter that won't let me write those two freaking words in all caps).
All these two are good at is following emerging technologies and integrating them into new or somewhat new technologies.
Wow, Jobs saw processors and memory getting smaller and smaller and saw a dual touch screen. All things done by others. All he did is put the emerging tech together.
With musk, it is the same thing.
They are not great inventors. They are good integrators. Good? Ya ... just good. If I had a job that had me full time following emerging technologies, I could probably do something also.
And to be clear, this is why Google said they are going to make robots. They said all the individual problems are solved (object recognition, bipedal movement, etc). Now you just need to integrate that stuff together.
Glorified tinker toys builders.
I am personally more impressed with Musk than Jobs. What Jobs did, with both the Macintosh and the iPhone, was to use his tyrannical leadership to bring developing technologies together faster than anyone else. Without Jobs, we would still have GUIs and we would still have smart phones with touch screens and rounded corners, although they might have come a year or two later than they did. Creating a viable electric car was a much bigger challenge. Sure, Musk couldn't have done it without massive government subsidies, but those same subsidies were available to all the big car manufacturers, and they didn't come up with anything like a Tesla. Without Musk, there still would be nothing like the Tesla.
I think whom the article is referring to as "great men" are great marketeers, great salesmen and great hustlers.
We remember people like Jobs and Musk for innovation, not invention. For putting the power of technology in our hands and allowing us to make use of innovations.
History will remember the Kilby's and Shockley's of the world even if society doesn't - they gave the politicians and figureheads of tech the tools to make their dreams.
It's not typically a smart financial move in today's society to actually invent things for a living. It's FAR more likely to bring a person financial success if they merely build upon known successes.
I've run across a few guys who really do fit the description of the classical tinkerer/inventor and all of them were living relatively "middle class" lives, living in average sized homes, and paying for what they had with something other than their inventing and tinkering skills.
Steve Jobs really deserves the most credit for his ability to see when it was the right time to take an existing idea and focus on it, building it into a product that would see mass consumer adoption. For example, digital music. Of course he didn't INVENT the idea! He didn't even invent the idea of a pocket sized digital music player. But he *did* realize it was the way of the future for music sales and had the sense to realize it needed to be marketed as one complete package. (Other companies might have been trying to market early MP3 players, for example -- but they weren't thinking about building a music manager app for it which was also the online music store, offering music from all of the major record labels they negotiated with.)
And when other companies are always trying to "add more things" to each product, to boost sales ... Apple generally embraced a "less is more" mantra. Jobs may have been a jerk about it at times, but he basically pushed his engineers and designers to keep going back to the table, until they found the easiest way they could come up with to control a device's functions. If the iPod designers didn't come up with that "click wheel" design, for example? I doubt it would have been nearly as successful. It was unique enough that it was actually fun to use it. When I had my first iPod, people would always want to borrow it for a minute just to play with the controls, because there was nothing else quite like that out there. Other MP3 players of that era tended to have tiny silver buttons you had to press multiple times to toggle through different modes and other bad UI designs.
Here's one... Maybe another.. But then, my definition of 'great' might differ from yours. Everybody here is just counting the money.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
CEOs work is hard an few can do it. They are the glue that hold everything together. People need direction and guidance and someone to look up to and "I know what I'm doing" CEOs offer that in spades.
Whether it's invention, integration, or just plain copying, a product has to be timely, to appeal to real and perceived needs. Steve Jobs was fortunate to be developing and marketing products during a time when gadgets and other small personal devices were taking on an extra psychological meaning to consumers. The same way that a vast number of consumers felt as though their cars were an extension of their ego and had to both reflect and enhance who they are, gadgets (and sneakers) started to do the same thing. Oprah Winfrey, for example, got a lot of her fame and fortune by combining a generic kind of spirituality with materialism and gadgets, a like of spirituality of consumption.
Apple products always implied that the people who own them are defying Big Brother or "think different." Even things like the white earbuds and headphones were designed to stand out in a crowd. People could simultaneously feel more creative and more attuned to art and design, and get the benefits of flaunting conspicuous consumption.
Even in times when a lot of people can't afford to buy a car or home, and can't show off their big electronics as a sign of conspicuous consumption, they can do so with the latest Apple device.
I thought he invented the electric car, invented the electric motor, invented the touch panel in the car, the Lithium battery, rocketry, and the sun. Shame on him for just using those to make a profit and doing so well at it he's making the others look like Minions.
The article seems to be saying that, since these celebrated leaders actually contributed a very small fraction of the time and effort needed to create the products that they're famous for, the products would exist without them. So, despite the adulation that's heaped upon them, in actual fact they're pretty much irrelevant.
I do not believe that to be the case. These people bring teams of talented people together, and give them a common goal to work towards. Without them, the real geniuses would toil in obscurity, and might accomplish little of lasting value.
Even though Elon Musk is no rocket scientist, without him there would be no (semi-)private rockets being launched to orbit, no one trying to make a reusable rocket, and no ridiculously expensive but powerful electric cars available for purchase. Even though Stan Lee stole his artists' ideas and credit, without him there wouldn't be eighty-four record-breaking superhero blockbusters in the movie theaters every summer. And though I personally have no real interest in recent Apple products, and thus found Steve Jobs insufferable, the electronic devices of today would likely be a lot uglier, clunkier, and harder to use without the pressure he put on his designers, and thence his competitors, to sleek things down and polish them up.
Yes, all these men were salesmen, and I hate salesmen. But they were great salesmen, dammit. Without them, the world would be a slightly more boring place. So give the devil his due.
Every invention has always involved a composition of existing technologies, and in nearly every case that composition looks obvious in hindsight. The world has long since internalized the notion that "invention" means "combining existing technologies in a way that has value to people". Only on Slashdot do people labor under the delusion that "invention" means "creating a brand new technology out of thin air".
This is why people on Slashdot don't understand patents and don't understand why some companies are very successful despite having not "invented" anything. Basically, the Slashdot community doesn't understand what the word "invention" means.
That's why you are struggling to figure out who has invented what. Let's try a thought experiment. Name a single person who has "invented" anything ever. I will trivially show you how that invention was based on a fairly obvious composition of existing technologies. You will say "if it was so obvious, then how come everyone else didn't do it?". Then you'll get sucked into a vortex of irony when you realize that you've just defended Steve Jobs.
Facebook is a website. It uses existing web technologies and runs on existing hardware. It isn't the first social network and it's hard to even identify any Facebook features that didn't exist on earlier platforms. It is the very definition of taking existing technologies and making it usable--and very arguably is just a "right place, right time" success story.
I don't see how you can call Facebook a major "invention" while saying that the company that launched four separate computing revolutions (each leading to multi-billion dollar industries whereas previous contenders had failed miserably) has never invented anything:
1. graphical personal computing revolution: the original Mac
2. portable music player revolution: the iPod
3. smartphone revolution: the iPhone
4. table revolution: the iPad
Within this context, there are 3 different placements for the word "Only". You got the first 2:
A. * It happens only in tech.
B. * It only happens in tech.
The third one is:
C. * It happens in tech only.
English is not my mother-tongue, I invite the English-firster to comment on the difference (if there is any) in terms of meaning/usage/emphasis on sentence A, sentence B and also sentence C
Job's brilliance was turning new technology into entire new industries 5 to 10 years before it otherwise would happen. He could see the future of the application of technology better than others.
He helped bring about a commercially successful microcomputer when HP, IBM, and others were stumbling at the low end. (IBM learned from their mistakes and Apple's success to bring out the PC a few years later.)
When he saw GUI's at Xerox, he know that's where the future was and knew how to stretch the lowly hardware of the day to make it a consumer product. (Xerox tried a product, but was too expensive and F'd up the GUI.) Granted, he stumbled a bit with the Lisa, but with some help got the Mac going.
He recognized the potential of Pixar's technology and helped launch a new industry. Everyone else saw Tron's failure at the box office and didn't want to touch CGI anymore. He said, f8ck Tron, I'm going to make this work.
He simplified the desktop in the iMac and made it stylish when everyone else did beige or macho Terminator gamer boxes.
The iPod had an appealing and simple interface while the competitors were clunky to use and learn, and sales rocketed.
He realized touchscreen was the future instead of Blackberry-like physical buttons, and rolled over them with the iPhone. (Android originally targeted physical keys until they saw iPhone do it right.)
He's the master glue between technology, users, and industrial design. He's not an inventor, but an integrator who knows when to zig when everyone else is zagging.
"Inventor" is the wrong word, but that shouldn't take away from his genius.
Table-ized A.I.
It's amusing, for instance, how George Crow and Bob Belleville had to sneak a deal with Sony behind Job's back, or the original Mac would have been delayed by months.
In another episode, Bob Belleville was the guy with the blind-spot, as he wanted to fire Bruce Horn, the guy working on Resource Manager subsystem (a nifty development/hacking tool that was fundamental to Mac applications until the advent of PowerPC). Bruce and his coworkers stood their ground (and also got Jobs involved) and thwarted what would have been a serious managerial mistake.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
I find it amazing that everyone thinks Steve Jobs did it all. When in fact Woz built the computer, Steve stole the graphical interface (so did Bill for that matter), AND Apple would be nothing without Microsoft's help. So let's not put Steve Jobs on this pedestal of innovators, when all he did was talk a good game of BS.
Once they lose their halo they are subsequently sacrificed and a new King is chosen. ref
Do great men make great events, or do great events make great men? The most recent invocation was the PBS 70th anniversary of the atom bomb and how Grove and Oppenheimer pulled it off in a short time. I suspect both sides are correct. There are clever peopel in all eras ready to be tapped.
I mean, this is seriously their argument, these guys are not so great because they used resources, by either managing talented people or taking advantage of and driving new technology. So if you have not forged something from pure entropy, you are a fraud. Makes sense, great argument.
Hero worship is in our DNA. The more you study apes the more you see the parallels. Every pod of chimps needs its leader. Usually said leader will not be the most deserving per se but the most ruthless. Ultimately he has very little effect compared to the cooperative efforts of the pod as a whole. It's not so much that a leader is needed, but that one is wanted.
your point is that Zuckerberg has better low-level technical chops than Jobs did. Sure. Bill Gates is probably better than both of them. Very possibly many [if not most] people here on slashdot are better than all three.
I think limiting the label "inventor" to only people who solder or code is pretty narrow and would likely exclude a lot of people who are technology visionaries and considered "inventors" in the zeitgeist. Jobs was certainly a tech visionary.
Of course he was utilizing government subsidy as much as possible for Solar City and Tesla. Of course Falcon 9 and Dragon received significant government funding. But most of his competitors have the same resources available to them to even larger extent. Why weren't they able to produce a product that is as successful? It is in the ability to dream, and put together what he has to realize it.
It's fun to blame government subsidy.
Solyndra received more initial government investment than Solar City, but SolarCity was successful, while Solyndra, which at one point represented 1.3% of all outstanding DOE loaned monies, and the only thing to come out of it was a $535M loan guarantee loss to the DOE, and $875-$975M in tax write-offs to Argonaut Ventures I LLC and Madrone Partners LP.
SolarCity, on the other hand, actually builds and installs real products.
I think Musk is doing OK, and deserves at least some credit on the bottom line; he's certain produced something more than Brian Harrison and Chris Gronet were able to do.
But ity certainly does apply. Imagine for a moment that reality changes and Musk finds himself digging ditches in Somalia for a living. Suddenly he is just that bad worker who spends too much time dreaming and not enough time digging.
Humans dream.
Robots dig.
That's the way God wants things. If you are a human digging, you are a wart on the tail of progress.
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_giants
It is that simple.
I love the comments decrying idol-making accompanied by the mitigation that these un-heroes stood "on the shoulders of giants."
Who, then, were these "giants?"
And hence the stupidity of the corporate hierarchy.
Most people get the stick, the higher ups get the carrot.
Add in the somber reality of winner takes all markets and you get the crapfest that is oligarchy swamped with propaganda about 'capitalism' and that hard work thing whathever those words mean anymore.
There are many factors where people are actually oppressed sometimes even unlucky. There are many different ways and mechanisms of oppression.
Why aren't more people doing it, because the system isn't set up to allow everyone to do it.
An economy does not work with only Elon Musks.
A winner takes all market with one very wealthy company cannot in any way make everybody rich!
"You are a product of your environment." --Clement Stone
> Most people get the stick, the higher ups get the carrot.
The thing is, the carrot only works if you never actually get it, but you think you will!
Intelligence? Talent? No, the ultra-rich got to where they are through luck and brutality. If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/11...
Casteism
You need to build a Pyramid scam without getting caught;
Casteism
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." --Isaac Newton
Casteism
Of course they're not going to want people to compare Elon Musk to Iron Man. Iron Man went to MIT, Musk didn't!
With a Gay CEO and Ex-Os the top hiring category is White Gay, followed by Lesbo then Trans making Apple Inc. the Queerest company in the valley.
Cook's and Ives' goal is to turn Apple Inc. into the Zoolander of Silicon Valley. OUCH.
Look what China did to those billions of butt dollars in China after China devalued the Yuan! OUCH 2.
That solves Cook's offshore money problems with the IRS! OUCH OUCH OUCH.
Cook to Ives, "Stop bitting ... just suck it ... use your tong for my ass's sake!"
Ha ha