Savemybutt.com

It’s been two weeks since I wrote a newsletter, it seems I’m always puzzled as to what content I should put in the newsletter.

But tonight, shortly before the radio show, I put down one of the four books that I’m reading that I received earlier in the evening from Amazon.

I’m currently reading books called “Where Wizards Stay up Late”, “Worms”, “Dealers of Lightning”, and “Steve Jobs”. All of these books have something to do with either the origin of the computer industry or the men involved in the origin of the computer industry.

In the Dealers of Lightning one of the prominent characters is a fellow named Bob Taylor. Bob Taylor was one of the innovators of ARPANET, the inspiration for the Internet, and the inventor of the personal computer at Xerox Parc. Xerox Parc stands for Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. It still exists in an area that is now known as Silicon Valley.

Xerox Parc is where Steve Jobs and Bill Gates first saw a graphic user interface on a display screen which was connected to a computer that Bob Taylor invented.

In starting my fourth book this evening, the Steve Jobs book, I discovered something extremely interesting. Dealers of Lightning and Steve Jobs are both books that talk about the genius of innovators and entrepreneurs. The only connection between the two that I can find in the books so far is that Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC saw the graphical user interface that Bob Taylor and his team had invented and decided to use that on the first Apple computer.

I also discovered something reading these two books about these two men that gives them another connection. It turns out that they were both very difficult people to work for many times giving instructions in a tirade or demanding more than their people thought they could deliver. For each, in his own time, invented what could have been called impossible.

I think the connection of Steve Jobs with his first computer to Xerox Parc to see Bob Taylor’s computer is more than ironic. Unknowingly one genius of the industry “acquired” the knowledge and idea of another genius of the industry, both having a similar management and creative style.

But, there is one more thing that makes us even more ironic. Both Bob Taylor and Steve Jobs were told at a very young age by their parents that they were chosen and special and both were adopted.

I’m trading off reading a little from each book each evening. The more I read the more I have a hard time putting either book down.

There are many more geniuses and innovators that made computers that we use in our homes and businesses what they are today but Bob Taylor and his team and Steve Jobs and his team are two of the great ones.

And somehow, intellectually, these two men were connected.