Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

Steve Jobs and innovation in business and art

I’ve been reading Inside Steve’s Brain, by Leander Kahney, a compelling business biography of Steve Jobs and Apple. Jobs is a business genius by all accounts (and regularly a jerk on the job, by most accounts).

Why has Jobs been so successful as an innovating entrepreneur? One factor is knowing clearly whether consumers or producers drive innovation.

Jobs’s view: “Creativity in art and technology is about individual expression. Just as an artist couldn’t produce a painting by conducting a focus group, Jobs doesn’t use them either. Jobs can’t innovate by asking a focus group what they want—they don’t know what they want. Like Henry Ford once said: ‘If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse’” (p. 62).

Another striking example, this one from Sony founder Akio Morita, one of Jobs’s business heroes:

“Sony would never have invented the Walkman if it had listened to its users. The company actually conducted a lot of research before releasing it. ‘All the marketing data said the Walkman was going to fail. It was unambiguous. No one would buy it. But Morita pushed it through anyway. He knew. Jobs is the same. He has no need for user groups because he is a user-experience expert’” (p. 63).

While Kahney could have used a good editor to help him remove many unnecessary repetitions, the work is a product of loving research and deep thought.

And a related point about the usual dichotomies that put the arts and the sciences, art and business, and artists and technologists into different categories, Kahney makes this report:

“Jobs has said several times that he thinks technological creativity and artistic creativity are two sides of the same coin. When asked by Time magazine about the difference between art and technology, Job said, ‘I’ve never believed that they’re separate. Leonardo da Vinci was a great artist and a great scientist. Michelangelo knew a tremendous amount about how to cut stone at the quarry. The finest dozen computer scientists I know are all musicians’” (p. 193).

Reminds me of a line from Paul Valery: “A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.”

What’s new in witchcraft

All from the first decade of the twenty-first century:

Sorcerers stealing or shrinking men’s penises in Congo.

Black magic murders in Brazil.

Witches beaten and humiliated in in southern India.

God punishes Haiti for its witchcraft and other immoralities.

But progress in Ghana: a call “for the immediate abolition of witches camps and witchcraft accusations against women and young girls.”

So globalization still has work to do — to spread not only free markets and free politics, but the core cognitive principles and practices that enable us to live as free human beings. And it is important to remember that, in cultural time, it was not long ago that many in Europe and North America were still in the grip of superstition and spooky supernaturalism.

Here is a classic example from 1587. In that year, Michelangelo had been dead for 23 years and Galileo was 23 years old, but the Europe that could produce artists and scientists on that scale could still persecute women like Walpurga Hausmännin for witchcraft.

The Judgment of a Witch
FUGGER NEWS-LETTER

THE HEREIN mentioned, malefic and miserable woman, Walpurga Hausmännin, now imprisoned and in chains, has, upon kindly questioning and also torture, following on persistent and fully justified accusations, confessed her witchcraft and admitted the following. When one-and-thirty years ago she had become a widow, she cut corn for Hans Schlumperger, of this place, together with his former servant, Bis im Pfarrhof by name. Him she enticed with lewd speeches and gestures, and they convened that they should, on an appointed night, meet in her, Walpurga’s, dwelling, there to indulge in lustful intercourse. So when Walpurga in expectation of this sat awaiting him at night in her chamber, meditating upon evil and fleshly thoughts, it was not the said bondsman who appeared unto her, but the Evil One in the latter’s guise and raiment and indulged in fornication with her. Thereupon he presented her with a piece of money, in the semblance of half a thaler, but no one could take it from her, for it was a bad coin and like lead. For this reason she had thrown it away. After the act of fornication she saw and felt the cloven foot of her whore-monger, and that his hand was not natural, but as if made of wood. She was greatly affrighted thereat and called upon the name of Jesus, whereupon the Devil left her and vanished.

On the ensuing night the Evil Spirit visited her again in the same shape and whored with her. He made her many promises to help her in her poverty and need, wherefore she surrendered herself to him body and soul. Thereafter the Evil One inflicted upon her a scratch below the left shoulder, demanding that she should sell her soul to him with the blood that had flowed therefrom. To this end he gave her a quill and, whereas she could not write, the Evil One guided her hand. She believes that nothing offensive was written, for the Evil One only swept with her hand across the paper. The script the Devil took with him, and whenever she piously thought of God Almighty, or wished to go to church, the Devil reminded her of it.

Further, the above-mentioned Walpurga confesses that she oft and much rode on a pitchfork by night with her paramour, but not far, on account of her duties. At such devilish trysts she met a big man with a grey beard, who sat in a chair, like a great prince, and was richly attired. That was the Great Devil to whom she had once more dedicated and promised herself body and soul. Him she worshipped and before him she knelt, and unto him she rendered other suchlike honours. But she pretends not to know with what words and in which fashion she prayed. She only knows that once she heedlessly pronounced the name of Jesus. Then the above-mentioned Great Devil struck her in the face and Walpurga had to disown (which is terrible to relate) God in heaven, the Christian name and belief, the blessed saints and the Holy Sacraments, also to renounce the heavenly hosts and the whole of Christendom. Thereupon the Great Devil baptized her afresh, naming her Höfelin, but her paramour-devil, Federlin oft received the Blessed Sacrament of the true Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, apparently by the mouth, but had not partaken of it, but (which once more is terrible to relate) had always taken it out of her mouth again and delivered it up to Federlin, her paramour. At their nightly gatherings she had oft with her other playfellows trodden underfoot the Holy and Blessed Sacrament and the image of the Holy Cross. The said Walpurga states that during such-like frightful and loathsome blasphemies she at times truly did espy drops of blood upon the said Holy Sacrament, whereat she herself was greatly horrified. . . . She confesses, also, that her paramour gave her a salve in a little box with which to injure people and animals, and even the precious fruit of the field. He also compelled her to do away with and to kill young infants at birth, even before they had been taken to Holy Baptism. This she did, whenever possible. …

She rubbed with her salve and brought about the death of Lienhart Geilen’s three cows, of Bruchbauer’s horse, two years ago of Max Petzel’s cow, three years ago of Dun Striegel’s cow, two years ago of Hans Striegel’s cow, of the cow of the governor’s wife, of a cow of Frau Schötterin, and two years ago of a cow of Michel Klingler, on the village green. In short, she confesses that she destroyed a large number of cattle over and above this. A year ago she found bleached linen on the common and rubbed it with her salve, so that the pigs and geese ran over it and perished shortly thereafter. Walpurga confesses further that every year since she has sold herself to the Devil she has on St. Leonard’s Day exhumed at least one or two innocent children. With her devil-paramour and other playfellows she has eaten these and used their hair and their little bones for witchcraft. She was unable to exhume the other children she had slain at birth, although she attempted it, because they had been baptized before God.

She had used the said little bones to manufacture hail; this she was wont to do once or twice a year. Once this spring, from Siechenhausen, downwards across the fields. She likewise manufactured hail last Whitsun, and when she and others were accused of having held a witches’ revel, she had actually held one near the upper gate by the garden of Peter Schmidt. At that time her playfellows began to quarrel and struck one another, because some wanted to cause it to hail over Dillingen Meadows, others below it. At last the hail was sent over the marsh towards Weissingen, doing great damage. She admits that she would have caused still more and greater evils and damage if the Almighty had not graciously prevented and turned them away.

After all this, the Judges and Jury of the Court of this Town of Dillingen, by virtue of the Imperial and Royal Prerogative and Rights of his Right Reverence, Herr Marquard, bishop of Augsburg, and provost of the Cathedral, our most gracious prince and lord, at last unanimously gave the verdict that the aforesaid Walpurga Hausmännin be punished and dispatched from life to death by burning at the stake as being a maleficent and well-known witch and sorceress, convicted according to the context of Common Law and the Criminal Code of the Emperor Charles V and the Holy Roman Empire. All her goods and chattels and estate left after her to go to the Treasury of our most high prince and lord. The aforesaid Walpurga to be led, seated on a cart, to which she is tied, to the place of her execution, and her body first to be torn five times with red-hot irons. The first time outside the town hail in the left breast and the right arm, the second time at the lower gate in the right breast, the third time at the mill brook outside the hospital gate in the left arm, the fourth time at the place of execution in the left hand. But since for nineteen years she was a licensed and pledged midwife of the city of Dilhingen, yet has acted so vilely, her right hand with which she did such knavish tricks is to be cut off at the place of execution. Neither are her ashes after the burning to remain lying on the ground, but are thereafter to be carried to the nearest flowing water and thrown thereinto. Thus a venerable jury have entrusted the executioner of this city with the actual execution and all connected therewith.

[From The Fugger News-Letters, ed. Victor von Klarwell, trans. P. de Chary (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head Ltd., 1924, pp. 259-262). Also reprinted in The Portable Renaissance Reader.]

More on how great artists become great

Some fascinating glimpses of Franz Liszt, the virtuoso pianist and composer. Biographer Alan Walker writes:

“The young Liszt developed into a voracious reader. A genuine thirst for knowledge drove him to such diverse authors as Sainte-Beuve, Ballanche, Rousseau, and Chateaubriand. His reading was, as yet, quite chaotic and lacked the intellectual purpose of his later years. His bookshelves embraced both the sacred and the secular. He filled his head not only with the ‘Defence of Catholicism’ by Lamennais, but also with the skeptical writings of Montaigne; prose of Voltaire. He often sat up half the night with such literature, looking for some key with which to unlock the world. D’Ortigue once saw Liszt remain motionless for four hours, sitting beside the chimneypiece, a volume of Lamartine in his hands” (p. 138).

That’s from Volume I of Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years. The Virtuoso Years, 1811-1847.

Liszt himself, at age 21, wrote a letter to Pierre Wolff about his intensive reading and thinking habits:

“Paris, May 2, 1832
“For a whole fortnight my mind and my fingers have been working like two lost souls. Homer, the Bible, Plato, Locke, Byron, Hugo, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Beethoven, Bach, Hummel, Mozart, Weber are all around me. I study them, meditate on them, devour them with fury; besides this, I practice four to five hours of exercises (thirds, sixths, octaves, tremolos, repetition of notes, cadenzas, etc.). Ah! Provided I don’t go mad you will find in me an artist! Yes, an artist … such as is required today” (pp. 173-174).

Liszt’s path to greatness reminds me of an earlier post on Beethoven and Michelangelo: How great artists become great.

Also interesting is Liszt’s comment, after a trip to Florence and Rome to study the painters and sculptors of the Italian Renaissance, that “the various arts were really unified, that ‘Raphael and Michelangelo make Mozart and Beethoven more easy for me to understand’” (p. 266).

How great artists become great

Beethoven, according to biographer Maynard Solomon’s Beethoven:

“Wegeler tells us that when a series of lectures on Kant was organized in Vienna in the 1790s, ‘Beethoven didn’t want to attend even once, even under my urging.’ Rather, Beethoven preferred self-education through voracious reading in popularizations of the works of the major thinkers; through rich encounters with poetry, drama, and opera; and, most happily, through discourse and conversation with good minds in pleasant surroundings—whether in the salon or the tavern, the palace or the coffeehouse.” (pp. 36-37)

And: “In 1809 [Beethoven] wrote to the Leipzig music publisher Breitkopf & Hä̈rtel: ‘There is hardly any treatise which could be too learned for me. I have not the slightest pretension to what is properly called erudition. Yet from my childhood I have striven to understand what the better and wiser people of every age were driving at in their works.’” (p. 37)

That intense engagement with the great works of the great minds reminds me of Michelangelo’s early and ongoing education.

When Michelangelo was a teen, according to biographer William Wallace, he was exposed to the best of the Florentine intellectual ferment:

“To begin with, the young boy was taken into the famiglia by Lorenzo the Magnificent, who treated him like a son. He spent two of the happiest years of his life in the Medici Palace, surrounded by the members of Lorenzo’s humanist circle and alongside his future patrons, Giovanni and Giulio de’ Medici (respectively popes Leo X and Clement VII).” (The Genius of the Sculptor in Michelangelo’s Work, p. 152)

That engagement with discussion, reading, and thinking, remained a lifelong passion. From James Hall’s Michelangelo and the Reinvention of the Human Body:

“Michelangelo venerated Dante throughout his life, and addressed two of his own poems to him. When he stayed in Bologna for about a year after the fall of the Medici in 1494, he is said to have read every evening to his patron Giovan Francesco Aldovrandi passages from Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio – only stopping when his employer fell asleep.” (p. 21)

Bridge over the Colorado River

From Popular Science’s “Looking Back at the 100 Best Innovations of 2009.” I love the drama of this photo of a bridge being constructed over the Colorado River:

You can almost feel the drive of the bridge’s arch sections to meet and complete themselves. It struck me as analogous to the energy flow between God’s and Adam’s hands in Michelangelo’s Creation of Man.

Creators indeed.

Here’s the description of the bridge at Popular Science:

“Temperatures upward of 115°F, winds capable of felling cranes, an 890-foot drop below: ‘Inhospitable’ doesn’t begin to describe conditions at the Colorado River’s new Mike O’Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge.

“A 1,900-foot span designed to divert traffic from the narrow, switchback-laden road across the Hoover Dam, it will be the longest concrete arch bridge in the Western Hemisphere when it opens next fall, with 106 segments of ultra-high-strength concrete forming a twin-rib arch. Workers scaled the canyon’s walls, digging notches for concrete foundation columns. To construct the 1,060-foot-long arch, they cast 24 feet of concrete at a time, while a separate, temporary cable-stayed bridge held up the unfinished ends until the gap was closed this year.”

For more wonderful, dramatic, and just plain interesting innovations from 2009 in Security, Health, Entertainment, Auto Tech, Computing, Building Technology, and more, visit Popular Science’s feature.

“Post-Postmodern Art” reprinted

My four-page essay on “Post-Postmodern Art” was originally published in The Newberry Manifesto in 2001.

It is also available in a re-print edition with images of the relevant works [pdf].