As noted on our sister blog, Sallyportal (‘Think Different”), the death of Steve Jobs (an “almost” alumnus) has occasioned many tributes to his “archetypal Reedie” persona. He was unconventional, driven, and a bit subversive. Reed coursework influenced him deeply, whether or not he was officially enrolled, especially his study of calligraphy at the hand of Robert Palladino. An article on Smithsonian.com has gone so far as to suggest that mastering the lettered hand led Jobs to think like an artist.
Steve Jobs’ sense of design and artistry set him apart from other engineers, to be sure, but I like to think that his intuition and personal taste are what made the first Macintosh, and consequent inventions, so distinctive. He is quoted as observing that “Taste is trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then trying to bring those things into what you are doing.” This concept of applying human qualities to technological devices may be at the heart of the appeal. While the Smithsonian article talks about typography triggering emotion, an essay by Adam Penenberg ’85 takes this idea further by arguing that the design of Apple products moves people to “ascribe human values” to them.
“Because of the magical way these products work–from their iconography to color scheme to each device’s shape–we project our own feelings on to them. We are like kids with a favorite stuffed animal until it is lost. Any parent knows trying to replace it won’t fly, because the stuffed toy has taken on a meaning far more important in the mind of child than mere fake fur, material, stitching and stuffing.”
My first Macintosh, a Quadra 660 (code-name “Tempest”) recommended by Marianne Colgrove ’84 (now deputy CTO at Reed) at the start of my freshman year, was a revelation to me. We’d had an uncomfortably corporate Epson computer at home, but this elegant, grey pizza box was more like a Pandora’s box of creative possibilities. From the voice recognition and other AV features to the Mac Paint program that let me draw my own desktop “wallpaper,” I was immediately enamored with the form AND function of the machine.
For this English major to be smitten by an object so quantitative seems surprising… except that the beauty of it begged for a qualitative overlay of sentiment and personality (I even named the speech-command assistant “Rosemary”). All of my successive Apple computers became like old friends to me, and it has always been hard to discard them (luckily FreeGeek now makes the separation easier). It must run in the family because my first laptop was a hand-me-down from my dad, the blueberry iBook that he was hard pressed to part with. Now the inheritance factor flows the other direction, as my mom welcomed my pink iPod Mini and then my turquoise Nano when I wanted to upgrade.
Luckily, here at Reed we’ve kept a few of the old friends around. No, not in the IRCs (those machines are up to speed!), rather Rabeca Reese ’86 in the computer store has had the foresight to preserve a representative group, on display this week. These assembled antiques elicit ooh and ahhs and personal remembrances from passers by; moreover, they remind us that it is not only insanely great to Think Different, but it is also pretty wonderful to Feel Different.