M.G. Siegler at Spyglass (my favorite tech blog right now, bar none), writing about the newly released video of Steve Jobs speaking at the Aspen Design Conference in 1983:
Everyone knows the famous/infamous “reality distortion field”, but it really undersells Jobs’ ability to command a room by speaking in a way that’s intensely human.
Too many of our current crop of entrepreneurs and CEOs just cannot do this for whatever reason. So many over the years have tried to emulated such abilities for obvious reasons, but they may mimic the look and feel of such a talk, but can’t copy the underlying empathy that seems to exist within Jobs in these settings. You can say it’s an act, but it works. Over every talk. Over years and years. Time and time again. It’s both a command of what he’s talking about and an ability to convey true belief in what he’s talking about. Mixed with a way to make it all relatable to seemingly every person in the room.
Emphasis mine. The talk itself is absolutely worth watching, and it’s wild trying to imagine a time when most of the audience present didn’t yet own personal computer, Apple or otherwise. I love this bit (especially because I’m currently reading the early chapters of Chris Miller’s Chip War):
Third thing about computers: they’re really dumb. They’re exceptionally simple. But they’re really fast.