Wit & Wisdom

Game Changers & Tales of Triumph and Woe

The College MIA List #6: Those Who Dropped Out Or Never Attended

SMW, April 7, 2010 10:43 AM

MIA7b.jpg

Read More About the Steve Wozniak Relationship (Rift?)
With Steve Jobs  (Fellow M.I.A.):

 "The iPad is Steve Jobs' Final Victory Over The Company's Co-founder Steve Wozniak."


* We especially like this recent Slate article about Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, co-founders of Apple, in how it describes their fascinating journey as two tinkerers (aka "electronic buffs") where not all was wine and roses.   An extra bonus: insight into their special relationship and understanding how the iPad may be diverging from their original vision.  An excerpt:

"Apple is a schizophrenic company, a self-professed revolutionary that is closely allied with establishment forces like the entertainment conglomerates and the telecommunications industry. To understand this contradiction we need to look back to Apple's origins. Let's go back to a day in 1971 when we find a bearded young college student in thick eyeglasses named Steve Wozniak hanging out at the home of Steve Jobs, then in high school. The two young men, electronics buffs, were fiddling with a crude device they'd been working on for more than a year. That day was their eureka moment: Apple's founders had managed to hack AT&T's long-distance network. Their invention was a "blue box" that made long-distance phone calls for free. The two men, in other words, got started by defrauding the firm that is now perhaps Apple's most important business partner.

The anti-establishment spirit that underpinned the blue box still gives substance to the iconoclastic, outsider image Apple and Steve Jobs have long cultivated. Back in the 1970s, the inventors reinforced their company's ethos with their self-styling as counterculturals. Both men had long hair and opposed the Vietnam War. Wozniak, an inveterate prankster, ran an illegal "dial-a-joke" operation; Jobs would travel to India in search of a guru.

But the granular truth of Apple's origins was a bit more complicated than the simplifying imagery suggested. Even in these beginnings, there was a significant divide between the two men. There was no real parity in technical prowess: It was Wozniak, not Jobs, who had built the blue box. . . ."

Full Story from Slate Here.

Plus, is the iPad killing reading???    Link to full Techcrunch article HERE



The M.I.A. List

See The MIA List Grow:  Those Who Dropped Out Or Never Entered College. . . you may be surprised.  Previous posts:

M.I.A. #5
J.D. Salinger
Barbara Streisand
Frank Lloyd Wright

M.I.A. #4
Walter Cronkite
John D. Rockefeller
Coco Chanel

M.I.A #3
Ted Turner
Woody Allen
Peter Jennings

M.I.A. #2
Bill Gates
Jack Nicholson
John Glenn

M.I.A. #1
Steve Jobs
Madonna
President Harry S. Truman


Can you help us add to this list?
 
(Ed. Note:  This is not to disparage a college education.  Point being with these posts is that not everyone is cut out for college for various reasons and should not necessarily be labeled as "not smart enough", as you can see from this list.  Hopefully, we will be more open to different routes people take in their lives. 

However, we also think online learning opportunities may open up access to more people to continue their education forever eliminating some of the constraints for furthering education (i.e. time, cost, pacing), even after college.

Personally, I loved college and thought it was important academically among other things.  High school?  Now that was another topic - don't get me started on that one.   -- C.J.)

Post a Comment

For most of my career, I was an awful listener in almost every possible way. I was arrogant throughout my 30s for sure--maybe into my early 40s. My conversations were all about some concept of intellectual winning and "I'm going to prove I'm smarter than you."
Kevin Sharer, Amgen CEO, Why I'm a Listener
Follow The Daily Riff on Follow TDR on Twitter

find us on facebook

bubble test.jpg

Opting Out from Standardized Testing

CJ Westerberg, 04.18.2012

Educator Will Richardson makes a decision to opt his son out of the state test & shares his story

Read Post | Comments

Riffing good stories

algebra.obsolete.jpg

21 Things That Will Become Obsolete in Education by 2020

CJ Westerberg, 04.17.2012

Desks, Language Labs, Computers, Homework, Standardized Tests in College Admissions . . . .

Read Post | Comments
manifest.jpg

The Flipped Class Manifest

CJ Westerberg, 04.16.2012

"The Flipped Classroom is an intentional shift of content which in turn helps move students back to the center of learning rather than the products of schooling."

Read Post | Comments
light-bulb.innovators.tony-wagner.jpg

Parents & Schools : Are we creating innovators? 22 Insights

CJ Westerberg, 04.16.2012

C.J. Westerberg reviews new book by Tony Wagner - "Creating Innovators" Plus Video.

Read Post | Comments
listen.talk.jpg

Why I'm a listener

CJ Westerberg, 04.16.2012

For most of my career, I was an awful listener in almost every possible way. I was arrogant throughout my 30s for sure--maybe into my early 40s. My conversations were all about some concept of intellectual winning and "I'm going to prove I'm smarter than you." -Why I'm a listener, Amgen's CEO, Kevin Sharer

Read Post | Comments
homework.jpg

The Flipped Class = flipped homework

CJ Westerberg, 04.15.2012

flipping a class is also flipping homework. I know, "no kidding, Sherlock" you may be thinking, but the flipped class will have impact on disrupting the concept of homework.

Read Post | Comments
green transformation.jpg

How the Flipped Classroom Is Radically Transforming Learning

CJ Westerberg, 04.15.2012

. . .AND how it changes the way teachers talk with parents - - -

Read Post | Comments
global.tech.jpg

What Students (Really) Need to Know

CJ Westerberg, 04.15.2012

"A good rule of thumb for many things in life holds that things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then happen faster than you thought they could." - Lawrence Summers

Read Post | Comments
flipped.class.abstract.part1.jpg

The Flipped Class: Myths vs. Reality

CJ Westerberg, 04.14.2012

We also realize there is a lot of mis-information about the Flipped Classroom and quite a bit of controversy about whether or not this is a viable instructional methodology.

Read Post | Comments

More Featured Posts