Steve Jobs walked to the podium, threw his jacket on the floor, and implored a group of designers to help shape the coming revolution. Addressing the 1983 International Design Conference in Aspen, Colorado, he simply explained his vision for the personal computer era he saw coming. He then turned to the challenge: “We have a shot at putting a great object there, or if we don’t, we’re going to put one more piece of junk object there . . . this stuff can either be great or it can be lousy. And we need help. We really, really need your help.”
ONE MORE PIECE OF JUNK?
What Jobs recognized was that major technological inflections are not just about accelerating what went before, but moments of profound redesign, and that takes more than just technical leaps. How we shape technical revolutions determines who participates, who benefits, what is gained, and what is lost.
Dispatches From The Front 