SEVENTIES SYNCRETIC COLLABO-VISION

The Seventies were a syncretic decade, the freedom of the Sixties plus a postmodern cynicism and marketing craftiness, that then bloated (like women's shoulder pads) into the businesslike Eighties. Seventies boyz Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were a rock n' roll collaboration. As other garages housed Punk rockers, these two--an intensely disciplined marketing nerd and a technologically adept playful hippie throwback—got into computers. In the Homebrew Computer Club they rubbed shoulders with older engineers and younger acolytes, all absorbing both technical acumen and cool-kid buzz. With electronic parts filched from their summer jobs at Hewlett-Packard, Steve and Steve's first Apple Computer was the Teisco guitar (OK, Ford Model T) of personal computers.

Wozniak sunk his fortune into a rock festival, then a symphony orchestra, and turned his attention to early education. The story of how Jobs lost, than regained, his corporation is a heroic struggle like that of Odysseus. Jobs' successor as Apple CEO (in the three years I labored there) was John Sculley. Trying his darnedest to be a Silicon Valley visionary too, Sculley's tame book shouldn't have been called Odyssey, merely Events. Steve's impossible return meant the importance of good design—and that Barnumesque ol' marketing savvy—ruled again, first with candy-colored iMacs, then convenient iPods.

Once when I complained to my wife that the prices in Palo Alto Whole Foods Market were too yuppie for me, I looked over to the next checkout and there were Mr. & Mrs. Steve Jobs. Following the 2000 Apple Stockholders' meeting, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison carelessly crossed busy DeAnza Boulevard, and these top dogs' Type-A rivalry was evident as each one trying to stay a couple steps ahead of his friend as they distractedly chatted and plotted; I noted how a speeding truck might have changed the course of the industry.

Is this collaborative project with Julie Newdoll and Jim Pallas like a band? A virtual construct like the Monkees, Archies or Gorillaz? An album assembled from afar track by track? A short-lived supergroup like Blind Faith?

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