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