The Condor and the Bicycle
Jobs: I remember reading an article when I was about 12 years old — I think it was in Scientific American — where they measured the efficiency of locomotion for all these species on planet Earth. How many kilocalories did they expend to get from point A to point B.
The condor came in at the top of the list. Surpassed everything else. And humans came in about a third of the way down. Not such a great showing for the crown of creation.
The condor won. Humans came in a third of the way down. Not a great showing.
Tool Builders
Jobs: But somebody had the imagination to test the efficiency of a human riding a bicycle. A human on a bicycle blew away the condor — all the way off the top of the list.
It made a really big impression on me that we humans are tool builders. We can fashion tools that amplify these inherent abilities that we have to spectacular magnitudes.
A human on a bicycle blew the condor away. We are tool builders.
A Bicycle of the Mind
Jobs: For me, a computer has always been a bicycle of the mind. Something that takes us far beyond our inherent abilities. And I think we're just at the early stages of this tool. Very early stages.
We've come only a very short distance and it's still in its formation. But already we've seen enormous changes. I think that's nothing compared to what's coming in the next hundred years.
A computer is a bicycle of the mind. We're in the very early stages. What's coming is enormous.