Sublime

What made his free-range access especially remarkable was the culture of Silicon Valley—despite the superficial pizza-and-foosball looseness, the rival tribes inventing the digital future were manic, competitive, prone to extreme paranoia.

The new hires took advantage of Xerox’s abundant resources and loose oversight to creatively interpret Goldman’s definition of “data processing technology,” pursuing projects inspired by Doug Engelbart’s ideas about augmented intelligence and by hacker culture more generally. Engelbart’s SRI operation had drifted after the great demo—investors coul

Beneath the vast enterprise and churn, I discovered the joyous, primal urge to invent tools that has driven human progress for millennia. I saw something uncontrollable, hungry, and wild—something human—that still exists in Silicon Valley today. That strain of fearless genius can and will drive a new technology revolution, perhaps even fulfilling t

Often, people would shout back, giving as good as they got, which Steve appeared to appreciate and encourage, saying he wanted to work with people with strong character.