Saturday, August 27, 2011

What made Steve Jobs a giant?

As Tim Wu chronicles it in his book, "The Master Switch," (http://timwu.org/) the telephone, radio and movie industries started out as an open, irrationally exuberant, chaotic muddle of incompatible standards, crummy technology and entrepreneurs.

The pivotal moment in the evolution of each industry came when a charismatic figure arrived to offer consumers better quality, higher production vaues and greater ease of use.


With the telephone it was Theodore Vail of AT&T, offering a unified nationwide network and a guarantee that when you picked up the phone you always got a dial tone. With radio it was David Sarnoff, who founded RCA. With movies it was Adolph Zukor, who created the Hollywood studio system, Jobs is one of those kids of people.

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