Jobs for One and All - Walter Isaacson in Silicon Valley

Steve Jobs - Genius

Lots of hooting and hollering today about the new Steve Jobs biography.  I can't wait to read it!

Jobs' biographer Walter Isaacson (he's also written bio's of Ben Franklin and Al Einstein) is a fixture of the American literary-intellectual firmament.  Within Time Inc. he helmed TIME Magazine and later CNN; more recently he's been head of the prestigious Aspen Institute.

"The Thinker" - Stanford's Cantor Arts Center

In the autumn of 1994 while he was "Editor of New Media" (a passing fancy) at TIME, Walt was invited to appear on the Stanford University campus for Della Van Heyst's vaunted Stanford Publishing Seminar (Della happened to be romancing FORTUNE Magazine, at the TIME).  I too was invited to join the same panel.

A fresh-faced Cardinal MBA student picked me up at SFO, whisked me to the campus and I wandered in the Rodin sculpture garden - to which I would return in 1997 - before joining the gang for a cookout preceding the evening program.  Walt appeared at the dais with tech reporter/author Kara Swisher, WSJ tech reviewer Walt Mossberg, and me - then Publisher of Discovery Channel Multimedia.

Our most interesting exchange that night, prompted by my observation during discussion of the future of books and magazines, concerned whether writing for interactive media was best and most creatively accomplished 'from whole cloth,' versus when adapted from literary source material.

One half of this Hollywood dichotomy is "Best Writing - Original Screenplay" (in 2011, David Seidler for The King's Speech) - from 1976 to 1978, in a fit of disclosure, the Academy formally referred to this category as "Screenplay written directly for the Screen - Based on factual material or on story material not previously published or produced").  The flip side of course is the Oscar for "Best Writing - Adapted Screenplay" (Aaron Sorkin for The Social Network - from Ben Mezrich's Accidental Billionaires).

Birches not Aspens - Walt Isaacson

At the time I was trying to negotiate a license with Warner Brothers for a CD-ROM tie-in with the upcoming Twister film, and separately (personally) developing a screenplay concept: a re-make of a film that had originally been produced in the mid-60's based on a 1950's Cold War novel. As he was then a Time-Warner executive-suite guy, I drew Walter out on the development processes at HBO and Silver Screen Partners.

I got the T-shirt...

The earnest Stanford kids pursued the thread, lobbing in some excellent comments and questions.

Walter was a nice guy - made some trenchant observations in his interesting New Orleans accent that is bent a bit conspicuously to the Brahmin by time spent in Cambridge.  He came off as pompous, I then thought . . . but not without solid justification, I now think!

Isaacson and I later shared the panel dais again in April, 1995 at the Software Publishers' Association confab in Atlanta.  More of the same, and a lot of fun!

Walt definitely got the big "get" with this book from Simon & Schuster.  Here's an excellent NPR story and interview from Fresh Air.  At this moment when "jobs" are the biggest issue of the election season, and "Jobs" the departing icon of American ingenuity and growth, can the biography fail to captivate?

  I think not !!

Steve Jobs - Zen and the Art of Innovation