Steve Jobs expected to be forgotten by history
In a previously unseen video clip from 1994, in between his gigs at Apple, Jobs says he expected his life's work to be obsolete by now.
- Finalist for the Nesta Tipping Point prize and a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
In 1994, while at Next, Steve Jobs gave a 20-minute interview to the Silicon Valley Historical Association (SVHA) in which he spoke about his legacy. Interestingly, at that point, he expected that he and his accomplishments would be more or less forgotten within a few decades.
A clip from that interview has just been posted to YouTube for the first time this week to help promote the SVHA's 60-minute documentary on Jobs, "Steve Jobs: Visionary Entrepreneur."
"All the work that I've done in my life will be obsolete by the time I'm 50," Jobs, still shy of his 40th birthday, says in the video below. "The Apple 2 is obsolete now, Apple 1s were obsolete many years ago, the Macintosh is on the verge of becoming obsolete in the next few years."
Remember, this is Jobs speaking before his return to Apple to turn it around and build it into one of the most valuable enterprises ever. Now, almost 20 years later, we've just seen the latest iteration of the Macintosh OS, and a working Apple 1 just sold at auction for more than half a million dollars.
Lots of innovators are forgotten by history, but it seems that Jobs has already joined the historical vanguard, drawing constant comparisons to names like Edison and Ford. The saddest thing is that the opposite turned out to be true, and the usefulness of Jobs' many creations will likely outlive the man himself by decades.
Watch the clip of the 1994 interview below: