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Tech's Enduring Great-Man Myth

Posted by Soulskill on from the on-the-backs-of-great-engineers dept.

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."

42 of 273 comments (clear)

  1. Hero worship comes in all sizes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Hero worship comes in all sizes by The+Real+Dr+John · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think religion has its fake superheroes as well as the IT industry, and sports. Jobs was not a great inventor, but he did make Apple a very successful company.

      People tend to idolize too easily. It seems to be part of why we have such a disparity in incomes in this country. Steve Jobs could not have done anything without the engineers at Apple. Credit needs to be spread around more.

      --
      A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
    2. Re:Hero worship comes in all sizes by Sivaraj · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you and I are given the same resources as Jobs, could we have created a Mac or iPhone? Jobs' greatness is not because he was a great inventor (though media simplifies it to that). But it is the ability to put all the resource available to him to realize a dream. I say this even though I am not a fan of Jobs or Apple. Quite the opposite.

      Same applies to Musk. 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.

    3. Re:Hero worship comes in all sizes by nine-times · · Score: 2

      People tend to idolize too easily... Steve Jobs could not have done anything without the engineers at Apple.

      I think we also idolize too easily in the sense that we oversimplify people's characters. We both idolize and vilify. People are good or bad. They're good businessmen or they're bad businessmen. They're smart or they're stupid. They're nice or they're mean.

      We don't like dealing with the subtlety of reality. Really, people are good in some ways, bad in others. Nice sometimes, mean other times. Good at certain aspects of running a business, but bad at other aspects, and the best and luckiest people manage to surround themselves with people who make up for their shortcomings.

    4. Re:Hero worship comes in all sizes by Javagator · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Here is my impression. Jobs was not a great innovator. What made him successful was his ability to recognize and surround himself with people who had talent. People like Andy Hertzfield and Steve Wozniak. Most managers like to surround themselves with people that look and act "professional".

    5. Re:Hero worship comes in all sizes by orasio · · Score: 2

      Doesn't seem right to me.
      I don't like Jobs or Apple, but...

      There are lots of engineers. As an example, Woz is as good as they get. He was instrumental to Apple's early success.
      Nonetheless, Woz without Jobs did lots of great stuff, but nothing close to what Jobs achieved when no longer working with him. I think Jobs credit is well deserved. He did make things happen, and his own contribution did at least jumpstart the consumer smartphone industry, among other achievements. It was not a technical feat, it was all him.

      I mean, engineers are good, but even when we are not cogs, you might think of them as the engines of innovation and technology. You need engineers, you need great engineers, but no single engineer makes enough of a difference to matter by his own. Maybe Jon Carmack may count as a notable exception, but most of the time, the tech guys are not the ones that make or break a company.

      At the end of the day, the guys who steer the companies, seduce the customers and investors are the ones that matter the most and make the most difference. If you are an engineer and you think your vision is somehow better than the guy who runs your products, then you should become a product guy and leave engineering behind.

    6. Re:Hero worship comes in all sizes by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 2

      Musk has a lot of money to throw around because he happens to be the rich dude that resulted out of the PayPal dotcom. He's used that wealth to leverage his way into a 'enhanced Paul Allen' adventure that has endured so far. The ability of his organizations to latch onto big government subsidies has further enabled him to throw around even more of other people's money.

      Yes, he is a very special individual, just like any other business wheeler-dealer who hit paydirt and is rolling forward with his winnings. Just another businessman.

      Good hero material for the types who enroll in 'Computer Career Academies' who seem to have crowded their way onto Slashdot these days. Seen as rather uncool by nerds, though.

    7. Re:Hero worship comes in all sizes by The+Real+Dr+John · · Score: 2

      You express the reverence of elites that I find problematic very well, but you appear to embrace it. I don't understand why there is such reverence for elites. Jobs was also notorious as a bully and a litigator. He wanted to sue everyone. He also colluded with other tech bosses to keep salaries down and prevent people from switching from one company to the other. I just don't see any of that helping make him a great inventor. And without any engineers, Jobs would have been able to do virtually nothing by himself.

      --
      A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
    8. Re:Hero worship comes in all sizes by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      He did seem to have that ability, but it was as nothing to his greatest strength: the Reality Distortion Field. If you read accounts of the early Apple days even back then much of his success was due to simply convincing people that everything his company produced was great, even when it wasn't.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    9. Re:Hero worship comes in all sizes by WolfWithoutAClause · · Score: 3, Informative

      To some extent, but it wasn't particularly affordable even then- that's why they specifically went with a high-end car like the Roadster. And make no mistake, the Roadster actually changed things- we may not have had the Nissan Leaf yet, if there had been no Roadster. The Roadster killed the giggle factor. Before that electric cars were looked at as glorified electric milk floats (even though the EV1 showed the way, nobody really listened as it was more of a concept car).

      --

      -WolfWithoutAClause

      "Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"
  2. Do you think it happens only in tech? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It is common in upper stratosphere populated by MBAs. Do you think all those entry level hacks who glean through excel spreadsheets till their eyes gloss over get acknowledged come bonus time?

    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
    1. Re:Do you think it happens only in tech? by epine · · Score: 2

      Do only(1) you only(2) think only(3) it only(4) happens only(5) in tech only(6)?

      A professional editor at the New Yorker with decades of editing experience would struggle to formally delineate the differences in those six cases. And just this sentence is just thirteen words, just padded out with just words.

      (1) As opposed to other people.
      (2) As opposed to thinking other things.
      (3) As opposed to vaguely posed alternate anaphors.
      (4) As opposed to other places, with a potentially abstract notion of "place".
      (5) as opposed to non-tech, broadly posed.
      (6) as opposed to non-tech, narrowly posed.

      This sentence could have been written more formally (in its narrow, intended meaning) as:

      Do you think it happens in tech only(6)?

      What happens, though, is that idiomatic elision interferes.

      If you just blurt out: "Only in tech!" and roll your eyes, people will get your drift. Moving "only" into the dominant initial position buttresses the fragment as standing for a complete thought.

      But if you blurt out: "In tech only!" people will probably go "what about tech only?" or "did you just read that off the back of the Cheetos bag?". It comes across more like a slogan than a complete thought.

      But then these habits involving sentence fragments bias word order in longer constructs, and the more idiomatic and less precise word order takes habituated precedence over a word order which poses fewer cognitive burdens.

      Linguists don't point this effect out nearly enough. Many weird things about short sentences are rooted in how we handle even shorter sentence fragments. For example, to write convincing dialogue, it helps if every third utterance is five words or less (efficiently laced with derision), because that's how people really talk.

      Novice writers often fall into the trap of writing dialogue in a semi-formal dialect of essay-lite, in which everyone involved patiently exchanges full sentences, with never a word skipped/stomped, as if all six participants woke up that morning and inserted large, niobium-plated elocution orbs up their pompous backsides, so as to convene later on best syntactic behaviour.

      In real speech in real situations (such as where there's a land grab in flight concerning the social agenda) I figure we're on BSB about 20% of the time, and those fragmentary speech patterns heavily influence how we form larger speech units that are idiomatic to even(1) the least degree.

      (1) so little as the least possible; stupid, but remains customary as it pre-announces the tone of the concluding drum beat, as any good musician should.

  3. Subsidies and innovation helps, but... by jfbilodeau · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Subsidies and innovation helps, but... by Gaygirlie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That is the difference between the average and the great IMHO.

      Or the lucky.

    2. Re:Subsidies and innovation helps, but... by haruchai · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I don't think "lucky" really applies to Musk, at least not now or not anymore.
      He claims to have been thinking about space travel & personal transportation since his college days but let's say that's bullshit and that his early startup successes were lucky.
      But no-one lucks into founding a company that builds rockets from scratch and becoming the head of a struggling electric car company at the same time.
      He could easily have taken all the cash he had and gone off to live a life of ease, well, as much ease as you can have raising 5 or 6 kids.
      Instead, he chose to tackle not one but two disruptive businesses that are cash & resource intensive instead of sitting at home and coding up some cool apps - he's been writing software since adolescence and is one of the ways he paid his way through college.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    3. Re:Subsidies and innovation helps, but... by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That is the difference between the average and the great IMHO.

      Or the lucky.

      Yeah, but The harder I work, the luckier I get.

      There is an element of luck, but Musk is a hard worker and knows how to surround himself with brilliant people that he has the ability to lead on a common task. This is something that most people cannot do.

      --
      Do you have ESP?
    4. Re:Subsidies and innovation helps, but... by DerekLyons · · Score: 2

      That is the difference between the average and the great IMHO.

      Or the lucky.

      Spot on. One of the reasons the Merlin engine is so small (relatively speaking) and Falcon 9 has nine of them - is that Musk and SpaceX screwed up, badly. They bought into the article of faith in alt.space that there is a huge and untapped market demand for small payload launch services and that was a logical place for rebel startups to position themselves. (Resulting in the Falcon I.) They got lucky and managed to get a new design (using those undersized engines) aimed at the major market (medium lift) out the door before they ran out of money, and got lucky again that NASA's COTS effort was finally reaching fruition just as they needed a steady revenue stream.

      Of course, Musk spins it differently... that it's all worked out According To Plan, and that's the version repeated by the hero worshipers.

    5. Re:Subsidies and innovation helps, but... by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      Jobs had skills. Think of it like this......imagine Donald Trump got placed as CEO of Apple in 1999. Would we see the iPod? Would we see the iPhone? Not at all, we would have seen a bankruptcy, because that's where Trump's skills lie. Trump is good at that, somehow Apple investors would have gotten more than they deserved from it, but we never would have seen the iPad.

      For an even bigger contrast, think of what would happen if Carly Fiorina were in charge at Apple in 1999. Or even Larry Ellison. It wouldn't matter how much luck they had, those guys aren't going to run a company that invents an iPhone.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    6. Re:Subsidies and innovation helps, but... by Tony+Isaac · · Score: 2

      "Luck" is the term used by envious unsuccessful people, who don't understand all the blood, sweat, and tears that went into someone else's success.

      If a person gets it right 1 out of 100 times, it's the ones who try 100 times who will get "lucky," not the ones who try only 10 times. "Good luck" is something that you make for yourself, not something that falls out of the sky into your lap.

  4. It's human nature by MikeRT · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:It's human nature by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 2

      The truth is even more subtle than that: these people not only have the luck of attention, but they have the collection of drive, vision, and technical understanding required to become these great figures.

      Steve Jobs and Elon Musk carry a lot of skills developed by all good managers and CEOs: they can lead people, they can develop business strategies, and they can speak and engage in diplomacy. They also develop enough of an understanding of technology to recognize its limits and its potentials, and so can run high-level engineering and say, "Oh, if you plug this part into that part, you could do this new thing," without knowing how to actually go about that--but still understanding that, yes, that works. Compare this to Trump or Fiona, people who understand nothing of what they work with, and run entirely on command, power, and shouting loudly to draw attention to themselves. Even the really excellent CEOs aren't diplomatic politicians, able to envision a future in all the potentials of technology currently at hand *and* excite the masses (including their own workforce) about that future.

      That's what our great visionaries are: they're damned good people motivators who have taken the time to understand the realistic limits of the things they want to plug together. Very few people put forth the effort to develop themselves as such.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
  5. Not MMM by T.E.D. · · Score: 2

    ...not to be confused with the great Mythical Man-Month, which is a completely different technical myth that never seems to die.

  6. Straw man? by countach · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:Straw man? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      One could say that edison was also just a guy who took the technological advances at his time and found a way to package them together into consumer products.

  7. Of course they don't do it alone... by elgatozorbas · · Score: 2

    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.

  8. The "great men" are usually great at business. by Ihlosi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You usually don't hear about those who are great at tech but bad at business.

    1. Re:The "great men" are usually great at business. by keko · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie, to who pretty much everyone in the tech field owes something. Including Steve Jobs, too. They passed away with just a few days of difference. There wasn't worldwide candle lighting events for Ritchie.

  9. Nobel Prize anyone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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?"

  10. we got it by fche · · Score: 2

    Yes, "he didn't build that".

  11. Great by tsqr · · Score: 2

    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?

  12. Got It All Wrong by sycodon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Got It All Wrong by haruchai · · Score: 2

      It's not Musk's fault if you have been unable to popularize your hundreds of grade school designs.
      There are differences between vactrains & Hyperloop, which you can read about on various sites.
      Here's one: http://www.gizmag.com/hyperloo...

      Proper credit for reduced pressure transport or vactrains should go to rocket genius Robert Goddard who, like Musk, dreamed of going to Mars.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
  13. Moderation in all myths by Marginal+Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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."

    1. Re:Moderation in all myths by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 2

      brought emerging technology together in an innovative way to create new categories of products

      Why don't you consider that to be invention?

  14. "Leaders" always take credit for other's work by msobkow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  15. Everyone stands on the shoulders of giants by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  16. Re:Inventors? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    "I wouldn't restrict his role to "sales guy" as perhaps Bill Gates was"

    You do realize Gates was the head programmer and lead architect for a very long time. Even in to the 90s he was famous for saying "what? You don't have it done yet? Fine, I'll do it myself this afternoon." For whatever you call him, to say he wasn't just a "sales guy".

  17. Standing on the shoulders by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2
    of Giants.

    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.
  18. This has always been true. by Brannon · · Score: 2

    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.

  19. You don't know what "invention" means. by Brannon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  20. Re:The Man, the Myth by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

    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.

    Apple has only enjoyed sustained growth under Steve Jobs. When they got rid of him, they suffered. Now he's gone again, and they're suffering again. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to recognize that Apple needs a strong hand at the helm. But it also doesn't take a genius to recognize that Apple can flail for quite some time before it runs out of money, or even cachet.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  21. He deserves credit by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.