蜜糖直播

Steve Wozniak

It鈥檚 going to be one of the most important days of your life that you鈥檒l never forget. Same is true for me. This is one of the most important days of my life to be here. You have no idea what this campus means to me, but for all these years鈥擨鈥檝e spoken for over 50 years鈥攊t鈥檚 the most beautiful campus in the world. I tell everyone about (me). I feel sorry for one of my three kids that didn鈥檛 go here, but the other two did. And when I was here...I mean, they told me to be brief and entertaining, so I put this robe over my briefs. And today is special for me. It鈥檚 our anniversary, me and my beloved wife, Janet. Yeah, we love each other so much, we celebrate an anniversary every single day. And this is day 5,753.聽

My first trip ever out of California was from San Jose, when the airport had two gates, to Denver, to get to Boulder to look over the campus with two friends from high school. It snowed that night. I鈥檇 never been in snow before. Out there in our underwear, throwing snowballs and making snowmen. I was definitely a candidate for schools like MIT and all that. I taught myself to design computers when there were no books or courses or anything on it. And I had all the 800s on the SATs for math and science. But that snow affected me so much. I love the cold. To this day, everyone says, 鈥淵ou鈥檙e a cold person. You go out when it鈥檚 freezing with short sleeves and shorts.鈥� And I love the cold. To me it means freshness, the freshness of 蜜糖直播. So I told my parents I would only apply to this one school, none of the others. And my parents told me they only had enough money for one year of out-of-state tuition here. That was a sad thing.

And I did get here my freshman year, 1968, when you had to walk a mile to get to the town of Boulder. I came to love the look of everything and all that. It was a different place. Fewer buildings back then. Anyway, my parents let me follow my heart. When you really want something, love something, it鈥檚 your passion, you should have your parents just supporting you going in your direction, not telling you, 鈥淣o, you should study this, you should go to this school.鈥� So I treated that the same way with my own kids. My parents didn鈥檛 force their values on me. They treated education as the brain. You know about different types of people and the way they think, the way they act, what they do. The only thing universal was you should be honest. And they let me choose for myself, so I was careful to be that way with my own children, that their choice was the most important. They鈥檙e not being directed into something. You鈥檝e all been educated to be leaders, not followers. Don鈥檛 do what everyone else tells you. Don鈥檛 do what everyone else does. Think for yourself and decide what鈥檚 right and wrong.

My yearbook from that year, 1968 to 鈥�69, shows a lot of soldiers on this campus with assault rifles. This was just during the Vietnam War, and the protests were much huger than protests today. That鈥檚 what I grew up in. It helps cement your values.

You know what? Instead of being praised here for some really good scientific programs I wrote鈥攚e had one big, huge, massive computer for the whole campus down in the basement鈥攊nstead of getting praised for my programs, I got demeaned because I ran our class five times over budget, I wrote so many programs. I thought you were in a class to program, and you got to program! I didn鈥檛 realize it boiled down to money and bureaucracy and that kind of stuff. But that happened to me a few other times in life, where I did really great things, but instead of praise, they weren鈥檛 the normal things to do. They were thinking different. The year that I was here, I decided one thing during that year. I knew computers by heart. My first course, it was a graduate-level course, and I was a freshman. I got an A-plus. Introduction to Computers was a graduate-level course. They didn鈥檛 have a computer science department. Just electrical engineering here way back then. And I decided I wanted a computer of my own someday that I could decide what to do with it. And when my dad said it costs as much as a house, I told him, I paused, and I said, 鈥淚鈥檒l live in an apartment.鈥�

Sometimes you make a promise to yourself, a vow to yourself. You can鈥檛 break a vow to yourself inside. This is something you鈥檙e going to follow for life. I also decided I wanted to be a fifth grade teacher, which eventually I did. Education department! Thank you. And I did it for eight years of my life, fifth through eighth grades. No press allowed. I wouldn鈥檛 allow press near students. Boy, did I teach them well. And part of that was making sure it was fun. I always believed in fun in everything in life. And anyway, I wanted a computer [of] my own. When it came later on, it was time I could actually build one with zero money. I wanted to help other human beings do more with their life than they could do without the computer. And not to rely on million-dollar mainframes that companies and universities could afford, but to actually be able to afford their own. I thought about it and thought about it and finally, the things were right for鈥攖he cost was the main thing. And I never did any of these particular things that I was doing to start an industry, never did them before. But I was smart, smart enough to go down to the basics of how electrons flowed through wires and create these things. I read an article about a guy named Sumner Redstone, who was the CEO of a big media company, Viacom. And he was flying around to one city to sell a company for a billion of today鈥檚 dollars, and then flying to another one to sell one for a billion dollars. I thought, wow, to have that kind of money, that kind of power, that wealth and power, would you want that when you die? And I thought back and I was laughing at a prank that I had played with friends and I said, 鈥淣o, I want to die remembering my pranks and the fun I had and funny jokes.鈥�

So I my life, I decided life, for me鈥攖his was my decision鈥攚as not about accomplishment, it was about happiness. How do you define happiness? Well, for me it was a formula. H equals S minus F. Happiness equals smiles鈥攃omedy, music, whatever鈥攎inus frowns. Minus F, frowns. How do you avoid frowns? Things go wrong. They just go wrong. Ah, get in the mindset if something goes wrong, I鈥檓 not going to blame why it went wrong. I鈥檓 going to do the constructive step. If my car got dented. I鈥檓 going to go take it to a body shop and get it fixed. Be constructive. Also, don鈥檛 argue. I found that any time you argue, you鈥檝e got a line of reasoning, somebody else has a line of reasoning. You both have good brains that believe in following lines of reasoning. You鈥檙e both good people. Dave Mason once sang in a song, 鈥淭here ain鈥檛 no good guy, there ain鈥檛 no bad guy. There鈥檚 only you and me. And we just disagree.鈥� Think about relationships. Bob Dylan said other lines like, 鈥淵ou were right from your side. I was right from mine. We鈥檙e both just one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind.鈥� By the way, I really discovered Bob Dylan strongly when I was here at campus. Went to my first concert, first concert ever, which was actually Simon and Garfunkel at CSU. A lot of good experiences you can read about in my book, 鈥渋Woz.鈥� And the day that I met Steve Jobs, he was 16 years old, had no albums. I brought him in my home and showed him all the liner notes and interviews and lyrics of Bob Dylan albums that were out at the time.

Anyway, I found, of course, that college, for me, was the most fun four years of your life. You want to be around other people with similar personalities. Four years of your life, or six, or eight, depending on how much fun you have. We started Apple with this intent of equalizing things for the disadvantaged. We wanted to make blind people equal to sighted people. Steve Jobs and I talked about that and look how successful we鈥檝e been. Everywhere you go, look at the sidewalk, and everybody鈥檚 walking around oblivious to where they are. The big technology word today is AI. I get asked about that a lot. I don鈥檛 have time to get into it now, but I believe in the A, but not the I. Because after Apple was successful, I returned to college for my final year of college. And I was very famous by then, so I used a fake name at Berkeley. And I took the psychology courses for psychology majors. I was a psychology major. I wanted to bring me closer to education. I still wanted to teach. But even with AI, we can鈥檛 build a machine that equals the brain of an ant. And you all have AI, each one of you: actual intelligence. Many of us in the tech field, we keep trying to create chips and all to make thinking machines that really think like a human. Well, I was at a company where the engineers figured out how to make a brain. Takes nine months.

Passion, you have passion for certain things in your life, you already have it, I had it before I even came here. And that鈥檚 what you鈥檙e going to do for regardless of reasons and logic, anything else. This is what鈥檚 going to drive you into what you want to be in life. And that鈥檚 how I lived, including coming to 蜜糖直播 after seeing snow. And, of course, I loved the new field of upcoming digital technology. There were no courses on that back in high school. No textbooks, nothing you could buy to learn how to design computers. But I spent all my free time on it. And I was a student at a university, and I could wash dishes for 35 cents an hour in a girls dorm and have money to buy a couple of extra manuals in the bookstore here. That kind of independence, intellectual freedom, and energy to stay up late at night solving problems. I also loved, one of my other passions was typing. For some reason I loved typing well. And I even beat the girls in high school in typing, too, which was so popular back then because one of the big careers for girls then was to become a secretary and a typist. So, I would type term papers for strangers in college. I would type it from midnight, from their handwriting cursive writing, I would type it from midnight till 6 in the morning. But I charged money, 5 cents. I loved doing it. To me, it had to be for five cents. Later on, five years leading up to Apple, I was designing projects for people all over California, including somebody who wanted to put movies into hotels. It had never been done; I got to design it. My charge was always 5 cents. I tutored students in inferential statistics later on, difficult part of experimental research. And I charged 5 cents per session. Another time a couple people came out from the University of 蜜糖直播 that had started a company, and it was the start of the internet, and I wasn鈥檛 quite connected to it yet. And they told me, I figured out how to set up an internet server in my office in Los Gatos. Los Gatos, home of the pet rock. Los Gatos, where Netflix is. Los Gatos, where Atari founded the arcade industry. It鈥檚 really a good city in Silicon Valley. And they told me I had to get this this domain, Woz.com. So, I applied for it and got it! Just domains weren鈥檛 even super popular then. You could get anything you went after almost. But, you know, I decided not to use it. 鈥�.com鈥� meant commercial, commerce, companies. And I鈥檇 been on a lot of nonprofit boards by then, and they always used 鈥�.org鈥� for nonprofits. I saw myself as a nonprofit person, not after money. I wasn鈥檛 after starting an industry or starting a company as much as I wanted engineers to say, 鈥淲ow, how did he ever design this stuff?鈥� So, I used woz.org instead of woz.com; I have them both. I have gotten praised by engineers.

When you鈥檙e young, you have that capacity to do a lot more in your life than you will later on. And, of course, you鈥檒l have to get a job to pay your apartment rental. But you know what, if you have a lot of free time and you have one of these internal passions, you want to go in a certain direction in life, create a certain type of company maybe, you have a lot of free time when you鈥檙e young, and don鈥檛 throw it away. Anyway, stay honest, keep smiling, and pay your own successes forward by helping others, mentoring and teaching. And you鈥檒l forget a lot of your class material over time, but one thing you鈥檒l remember is the people you had experiences with, and your time here at 蜜糖直播, and today. Go, Buffs!