1981 Nightline interview with Steve Jobs
Transcript
Machine transcript in the original language. It may contain errors. Select a timestamp to play that moment.
Today's computer problem at Cape Canaveral was distressing perhaps, but for most Americans not totally surprising.
As a society we've become used to computer problems of one kind or another just as we've become used to computers.
We're so used to them in fact that few of us stop to think of the extent to which they now play a role in our everyday lives.
A role that shows every sign of growing even bigger.
We have two reports, the first from Bettina Gregory.
You can't do the simplest things today without using a computer.
You can't cash a personal check.
You can't even make a phone call without linking into the telephone company's computer.
And if you go to the supermarket, the chances are good a computer will check out your groceries,
mechanically assisted by a human being.
In some areas, computers have replaced humankind.
In Washington, the subway system is run by computer.
True, motorman ride in the cabs, but only as a backup to this computerized service.
In the airline industry, computers will reserve your seat on a plane.
And make no mistake, when you take off,
it's the computers who tell air traffic controllers how to get you safely to your destination.
Computers have revolutionized the personal credit card industry.
Credit card billing would be a lot harder to do without the computer.
And of course, the computer provides the inevitable excuse for mistakes in your bills.
Humans often feel like Don Quixote tilting at windmills when it comes to fighting the almighty computer.
Miracles of modern medical diagnosis are made possible by computers,
and academic research is more comprehensive.
Computers have had an enormous impact on television journalism.
ABC News researchers have millions of hours of film and videotape right at their fingertips.
Film of an elephant?
There are 223 entries in the ABC News library.
An elephant at a circus?
We have 20 such entries.
But if you want an elephant with a rider, the computer says we have only one such film.
It's a small computer that puts the letters on your television screen,
and another one that creates special effects,
which were once too expensive and time-consuming to produce before the age of the computer.
Since Wall Street started using computers, volume on the big board doubled and redoubled
to as much as 70 million shares a day.
The government certainly uses computers.
When you pay your taxes, IRS computers will audit the returns.
The federal government also uses computers to track down runaway husbands on welfare.
And now the Reagan administration wants to cut down the number of welfare cheats by putting a computer cross-check on everyone who gets government help.
That's going too far, says the American Civil Liberties Union.
But for the most part, computers have become such a way of life that many people believe they don't invade their privacy.
That's because in America today, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is inevitably linked to a computer.
Matina Gregory, ABC News, New York.
This is Ken Kashiwahara.
Personal computers are being welcomed in schools and in businesses and in homes
without any mention of invasion of privacy.
In fact, assembly lines are literally grinding them out,
attempting to keep up with demand.
Personal computers have become popular because of their size and their cost.
They are compact because their tiny memory banks are made out of even tinier microchips.
A basic unit can be had for as little as $1,500.
Schools use the computers not only to teach children, but to teach them about computers.
Educators at this junior high school say students are going out into a computer world and should know something about it.
Small businesses have latched on to the personal computer boom,
using the devices to map out financial plans and to print memos and letters, all at the touch of a button.
And the personal computer is beginning to invade the home.
In this house, the solar power is controlled and regulated by a computer.
Here, the computer is used to entertain.
Video games are programmed and the battle is waged.
And Fred Wilkinson says he uses his home computer to store information and to learn.
It's a daily event.
There isn't a day that goes by either through a magazine or through the keyboard or through a program
but through talking to somebody that I don't pick up more and more information.
And it's a growing experience.
I see that in myself and I see it in other people who I deal with
that started out much the same way I have.
The personal computer boom has been a boom to one company in particular.
It has become the Big Apple in this land of high technology.
Since the Apple Computer Company was founded five years ago,
its sales have skyrocketed from about $100,000 to more than $100,000,000.
Stephen Jobs helped build the first Apple computer in his garage.
He is now 26 years old and is chairman of the board,
and he sees his computer's future as the future of mankind.
This is a 21st century bicycle that amplifies a certain intellectual ability that man has.
And I think that after this process has come to maturity,
the effects that it's going to have on society
are actually going to far outstrip
even those that the petrochemical revolution has had.
But these computers are not necessarily
simply innocent playthings of the future.
Some people feel threatened by them.
Some think they tend to dehumanize,
and others fear they may eventually take over their jobs.
Ah, but at least it still hasn't learned how to say, back to you, Ted.
Back to you, Ted.
I'll have my computer talk to you in a moment.
And in a moment, we'll talk live with the chairman of the Apple Computer Company
and with a writer who warns of the dangers that computers pose to society.
It's really an example of sort of the role that computers are now playing in our lives
in a sense that that computer that malfunctioned was really as critical to the success of the shuttle
is the thrust of the boosters that were going to lift it up in the air.
And in essence, both the boosters and the computer
were really performing the same type of function.
Both were amplifying an inherent ability that humans have.
In other words, no more could even a small collection of people run the shuttle
than they could jump up in the air several thousand feet in the atmosphere.
All right.
There is a sense, though, that many of us have
who really don't understand how computers work
or what they do for us or to us,
that we are becoming controlled by the computers.
Is there any danger of that happening?
Well, as you know, the product we manufacture,
many people see it for the first time,
and they don't think it's a computer.
It's about 12 pounds.
You can throw it out the window
if the relationship isn't going so well.
And I think if you look at sort of the process
of the technological revolution that we're all in,
it's a process of taking very centralized things
and making them very democratic, if you will,
very individualized,
making them affordable by individuals
for a small collection of tasks, if you will,
sort of from the passenger train to the Volkswagen.
All right, we heard you talking on tape a moment ago about the bicycle of the 21st century.
What were you talking about?
Well, actually, I read a survey in Scientific American in the early 70s,
and what this survey had done was it measured the efficiency of locomotion
for various species of things on the planet, birds, fish, dogs, and it ranked them.