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Sidenote: You can tell Woz is an amazing genuinely good person with no hint of pretension or self importance. A lot can be discerned about famous personalities
by Dn_Ab 13y ago
Sidenote: You can tell Woz is an amazing genuinely good person with no hint of pretension or self importance.
A lot can be discerned about famous personalities by who they choose to follow. For example, you can tell whether the person has little utility for social networks but maybe started out following a scattering of experts relevant to their interests.
Usually though, the personality is using their handful of followed people as an importance signalling factor. Often they will be following somewhere between -5e6 to 10 hugely important to unbelievably hugely important people; people with names like Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, Paris Hilton, Bono, Lord Vishnu and Kanye West.
On the other hand we have those like Steve Wozniak - following nearly 5000 people and deigning to reply to someone even the likes of HN commenter OGC is completely unaware of.
That is, in all seriousness, an incredible sign of sustained humility.
- gokulk 13y agoLord Vishnu ?
- hobs 13y agoHindu god. "the all-pervading essence of all beings, the master of—and beyond—the past, present and future, the creator and destroyer of all existences, one who supports, preserves, sustains and governs the universe and originates and develops all elements within. Though he is usually depicted as blue, some other depictions of Vishnu exist as green-bodied, and in the Kurma Purana he is described as colorless and with red eyes.[1]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vishnu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vishnu
- gokulk 13y agoI am Hindu. I was just suprised Lord Vishnu has a social media account.
- sliverstorm 13y agoYou think technology is beyond Vishnu?
- lsh 13y agojust made my day ;)
- elwell 13y agoI like how Kanye is listed after Lord Vishnu.
- saraid216 13y agoTurns out there are like... 5 Lord Vishnus on Google Plus.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- wpietri 13y agoI volunteered at a conference series where Steve Wozniak was a regular attendee. As anybody who has ever worked a generic job knows, some people treat you like people, and some treat you like a used tissue. This particular conference had an amazing volunteer crew that had been together for years, many of whom had serious day jobs: brilliant designers, high-tech executives, etc. Knowing that the volunteers were gems, I knew that how the famous conference speakers treated them was all about the speakers. I didn't think famous people would really do the, "Do you know who I am?" thing, but I saw it happen. Anyhow, Wozniak was one of the best. Warm, friendly, genuine. I remember one year he showed us a magic-shop gizmo he had just acquired, delighted by the cool effect they had contrived. Since I had grown up hacking on my Apple ][+ and kinda idolizing him, it was both a pleasure and a relief to learn that he was just as swell to everybody as you'd expect him to be.
- sliverstorm 13y agoI've always wondered more about Woz than Jobs! We get plenty of shrewd businessmen; they aren't a dime-a-dozen, but they aren't an enigma either. Kind of an understood phenomenon. People like Woz (at least based on the myriad recountings; I have not met the man) seem to actually be rare. I wonder if there was an interesting aspect to his youth, or what. Maybe the same way that you can have a psychopath, you can have the opposite? Someone whose brain is hard-wired to be more empathetic than normal?
- dhruval 13y ago"Maybe the same way that you can have a psychopath, you can have the opposite? Someone whose brain is hard-wired to be more empathetic than normal?" Something like this maybe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_sensitive_person http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_sensitive_person Even more interesting, is this model that describes how some of the negative stuff (shyness, nervousness) related to having high sensitivity can be overcome by the subset of that population that go on to accomplish great things: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Disintegration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Disintegration
- andrewtbham 13y agoHe wrote a book called iWoz. It's definitely worth a read if you're interested in him. He was obsessed with building his own computer from a young age.
- JeremyMorgan 13y agoYup. Far better than the Jobs autobiography, though both were fascinating people I think Woz resonates with the average person much better, though his skills and intellect are far above average.
- lsh 13y agoI read that book and while I can recommend it, I felt Woz didn't dwell particularly long on any single aspect - it was just a nice long polished story, like something he had told many times before but this time collected into a book. I don't think I was looking for secrets or drama, but the man has done some amazing things and he puts so little emphasis on them in the book. Does a Wozniak biography exist that is not an auto-biography?
- oskarth 13y agoOr maybe they follow few people because of limited resources. You can't infer someone's humility bases on the amount of people they follow on twitter. Why do they follow "big" people? Maybe because they are friends, someone they look up to or just someone they want to keep track off. In other words, the exact same reason you follow someone.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]