What would Steve Jobs do with podcasting?
Today’s the day to get ahead of the weekend traffic and take our van somewhere new. Thank you for joining me in this #vanlife of a podcast publication where we’re always relaxed, comfortable, listening to good road trip music, and exactly where we want to be. Our destination today is the intersection of liberal arts and technology.
I’m going to make the case that what Jobs was trying to do across all of Apple’s products in the mid 2000s is exactly what podcasting should be trying to do today.
As Apple fumbles about and fails to make software that inspires awe or even tell-your-friends excitement, I miss those Steve Jobs days. His belief in combining the humanities with technology, and his description of computers as a “bicycle of the mind,” were foundational to my whole career. As Apple loses sight of this goal we all lose a vision for a better future, and if we more broadly as humans also lose sight of it, we are lost completely.
But many of us outside of Big Tech haven’t lost Job’s vision. Those of us who remember and believed in it can continue to espouse it, manifest it, and teach it. We can make software that makes us better.
