Reed College Howard Vollum Award acceptance speech

Around this recording

The recordings either side of it, in order.

All 202 recordings of Steve Jobs →

1. 1990

   Library of Congress film: Jobs and Stewart Brand on the future of libraries

   For a 1990 Library of Congress promotional documentary (cast also includes Francis Ford Coppola, Julia Child, Penn & Teller and Gore Vidal), Jobs sits with Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand to talk about networked libraries, simulation as education, and humans as tool builders.

2. 1990

   NeXT ‘Interpersonal Computing’ sales demo video

   A 35-minute NeXT-produced tape in which Jobs demonstrates interpersonal computing – mail with voice annotations, multitasking, network file sharing, inter-application Services, faxing and color graphics – for sales teams to show business clients.

3. 1990

   NeXT demonstration to Canon in Singapore

   Jobs demonstrates the NeXT system to Canon executives in Singapore in August 1990; Canon became NeXT’s exclusive APAC reseller and a key investor.

4. 1990

   NeXTstation and NeXTcube introduction

   Jobs introduces NeXT’s second-generation line — the ‘pizza box’ NeXTstation, the NeXTstation Color, the upgraded NeXTcube and the NeXTdimension color board — alongside NeXTSTEP 2.0, and coins ‘interpersonal computing’ as the application area of the 1990s.

5. 1991

   Internal NeXT marketing strategy ‘chalk talk’

   In a leaked internal video Jobs maps the workstation market, splits it into ‘science and engineering’ and an emerging ‘professional’ half, claims NeXT has won 15 of 15 recent head-to-heads with Sun, and lays out three buying reasons and the channels to reach them.

6. 1991

   Interview on ten years of the personal computer

   Asked to reflect on ‘ten years of the PC’, Jobs objects that the Apple II predates the IBM PC by four years, predicts the industry will ‘bifurcate’ into portables and networked color desktops, and argues that Apple and IBM will deliver only evolution while NeXT drives the next revolution.

7. 1991

   Reed College Howard Vollum Award acceptance speech

   Accepting the Vollum Award at Reed’s 1991 convocation, Jobs thanks the college ‘for teaching me how to be hungry’, recalls living on Roman Meal cereal and Hare Krishna Sunday meals, and credits dean Jack Dudman’s quiet $20 gift as a lesson in generosity: ‘Character is built not in good times, but in bad times.’

8. 1992

   NeXTWORLD Expo 1992 keynote

   At the second NeXTWORLD Expo Jobs previews NeXTSTEP Release 3 and the new Turbo NeXTstation line, and — most consequentially — demonstrates NeXTSTEP running on an Intel 486 PC, the first public sign that NeXT’s future lay in software. Nearly two hours of the keynote survive.

9. 1992

   MIT Sloan Distinguished Speaker Series talk

   The only known recording of Jobs’ university class visits: he explains NeXTSTEP’s ‘write less code’ philosophy, attacks consultants for never developing ‘scar tissue’, discusses competitors Sun, Microsoft NT and Taligent, plans to port NeXTSTEP to Intel 486, and reflects on his ouster from Apple.

10. 1992

    NeXTSTEP Release 3: A Demonstration with Steve Jobs

    The best-known NeXT demo: Jobs builds a database front end with Interface Builder and Database Kit ‘without writing a line of code’, shows multimedia NeXTMail with voice annotation, drag-and-drop embedding, system-wide Services, faxing from any app, DOS and X apps in windows, and RenderMan rendering.

11. 1992

    French TV interview on ‘Capital’ (June 1992)

    A ten-minute interview with Jobs broadcast on the French business programme ‘Capital’ in June 1992, during NeXT’s best year, when it was shipping the NeXTstation line and NeXTSTEP 3.0. One of the few European television interviews from the NeXT period.

12. 1993

    NeXTWORLD Expo 1993 keynote

    Three months after killing its hardware, NeXT ships NeXTSTEP 3.1 for Intel 486 PCs, and Jobs makes the case for object-oriented, client/server ‘mission-critical custom apps’ as NeXT’s new business. Roughly an hour of the keynote and demos survive from a VHS source.

13. 1993

    Interview on Paul Rand

    Jobs talks about designer Paul Rand, who created the NeXT logo, in an interview filmed in front of NeXT’s Redwood City offices – the source of the oft-quoted ‘I asked him if he would come up with a few options... he said no, I will solve your problem for you’ story.