| Thursday, June 16, 2005 |
15:43 - Awful tasting medicine
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
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Everybody's linking to this Stanford commencement speech simply because it's not just another obnoxiously political exhortation by some Hollywood figure for the graduates to Think For Themselves by always listening to NPR instead of Fox News. But it stands up well and is of keen interest on its own merits, and because it's by Steve Jobs.
It's his home turf, to be sure, so it was probably as receptive an audience as any of the fêted authors and actors taking the stage at other graduation ceremonies these days; but even if it weren't, it's good stuff. It's easy to smirk at Steve's mercuriality or to be horrified at his authoritarianism, but I think there's a lot to like in his biography, and a lot of lessons to be learned from it. I'm glad he's getting up there to dispense them.
And to think: my graduating class of Caltech, when nominating and voting for a commencement speaker, was in a three-way toss-up between Tom Brokaw, Al Gore, and a videotape of Marshall Applewhite.
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Brian Tiemann
