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Steve Jobs & LSD

DwayneHoover

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Joined
Jun 29, 2007
Messages
2,726
Location
Cincinnati OH metro region
I'm sure it's widely know around these parts but deserves a mention now... Where would we all be if not for the Mac OS? Godspeed, Steve.

8 things you didn’t know about the life of Steve Jobs [EXCERPT]
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/8-things-didn-t-know-life-steve-jobs-172130955.html

7. Relationship with LSD

In a few interviews, Jobs hinted at his early experience with the psychedelic drug LSD. Of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Jobs said: "I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger."

The connection has enough weight that Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist who first synthesized (and took) LSD, appealed to Jobs for funding for research about the drug's therapeutic use. In the letter, Hofmann wrote: "I understand from media accounts that you feel LSD helped you creatively in your development of Apple computers and your personal spiritual quest. I'm interested in learning more about how LSD was useful to you."

In a book interview (http://books.google.com/books?id=cTyfxP-g2IIC&pg=PT21#v=onepage&q&f=false), he called his experience with the drug "one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life." As Jobs himself has suggested, LSD may have contributed to the "think different" approach that still puts Apple's designs a head above the competition.


8. Alternative lifestyle

Jobs will forever be a visionary, and his personal life also reflects the forward-thinking, alternative approach that vaulted Apple to success. During a trip to India, Jobs visited a well-known ashram and returned a Zen Buddhist — a Buddhist monk even presided over his wedding to his wife, Laurene Powell.
 
^ yes i read something along the same lines in an interview with bill gates, the same thing

i think steve jobs became something of a cult leader !

highly appreciated when i found out he had bought CGI company Pixar, before they blew up, though
 
not really an apple product fan, but i must admit this guy was indeed a visionary an an overall really smart guy. i dont know how much he actually did in the design or technical aspects of the products he backed, but he had instincts and knew how to promote. he also seems to have been really hard working and ambitious...

doubt the lsd had anything to do with it really....
 
actually we would not have personal computers or the internet if not for lsd.even look at the apple logo.the forbidden fruit.knowledge.lsd brought about the ideas to create a synthetic brain if you will,the internet via personal computers.im pretty sure steve and his buddies knew the fastest way to access real knowledge was lsd and the internet.its NO coincidence that the first personal computers were being developed when lsd was first widely used in the 60s and then the other huge influx of lsd came when the internet was born in the 90s.it goes hand in hand.No coincidence.
 
Very cool information. %)

I personally love Macs. I'm so grateful for mine, and use it every day.
 
I don't find it hard to believe that LSD had a significant influence on Apple's innovations, especially if it was one of the "most important" things Steve ever did in his life.

I've heard that a lot of engineers and programmers have taken a liking to LSD for the increased creative capacity it gives them.
 
I think there are a lot of people really hating on Steve Jobs since he died, saying that people shouldn't care because Mac OS is shit etc.
Personally, I am not a fan of the current state of Mac OS at all, it is a Unix based system, and really the only advantages it holds over any Linux distribution are: -Nicer GUI out of box, -Easier to use for someone migrating from Windows, -Lots of larger games have ported copies to Mac, while not for most Linux distributions. All of this comes with an increased price tag over the same hardware of around $400-500. Not a worthy price for those few extra features.

However, Steve Jobs didn't hand work the whole thing, it's still a solid operating system, just currently at an unfair price for what it offers. What people forget is Steve Jobs isn't just about the Mac we see today or the iPads and iPhones. Him, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, personal computers may have taken a completely different route to where they've gone today, we may have been years behind. Apple were actually the first company to offer multiple different fonts on their operating systems, so without their intervention we might have been limited to a single typeface throughout our use of the desktop - imagine that.

Overall he was an intelligent guy, who helped change the computer industry with the help of the other two founders. I have a lot of respect for the guy and it's sad to see him go.

As for the subject of the topic, both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have a lot of experience with weed and psychedelics, I'm dead sure it was those experiences that helped them build their first products. Hell I even saw an interview where Bill Gates said almost all of his original ideas came from "Getting stoned in a hot tub" with his friends.
 
even look at the apple logo.the forbidden fruit.
i enjoy this idea

i saw a video of him at some prototype centre, and he saw a computer with a mouse; he was saying all computers would be like that in the future, but it would be a slow transition
 
I dunno... I sure like taking some acid and then playing electronic music on my Apple iPod, produced by artists using Logic Pro.

You have to excuse my cynicism. Still. Apple is a true pinnacle of capitalism. Capitalism is scary; unavoidable perhaps, but scary.
 
Anyway, that article seems to generally paint a pretty grim picture of chronic LSD use, wouldn't you say?

No. I think it's ridiculous twaddle. Classic example of utterly laughable junk pseudoscience. This was in 1968. When they didn't know FUCK about detailed aspects of brain functioning, let alone pretending they could map EEG readings (which they really had NO idea what they corresponded to) to very specific behavioural meanings or results. Complete amateur guesswork.

What the fuck are all those lengthy descriptions of the machine settings and what they were measuring? Who cares? There is no resoning behind WHY these settings or response observations have meaning. They are just a pile of technobabble. I don't care if they are EEG "experts" (circa 1968 when EVERYTHING about neuroscience was just a wild ass guess, LOL). There is ZERO proof that any of the observations mean anything. I think it's all a bunch of crap BS trying to make it sound like they know what they are doing with no background rationalle of research behind it. This is what lab geek junk scientists do to convince you they know what they are doing and accept their totally pulled outa their ass "conclusions." What is the saying... "If you cant dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit."

Looks to me they were probably funded by government and so were striving to come to some appropriately negative conclusions about drugs. Also, including "the acidheads" in their paper title seems deliberately inflamatory and it totally gives away some pre-formed judgemental conclusions.

Wad it up and throw it in the trash IMO :p

(Sorry Applecore, rasberry not directed at you but the authors... I have a mechanical engineering degree and I am sorry but "studies" need to have WAY more rigor that this. You need to always take ALL research, even in harcore science, let alone in these soft "human factors" disciples, with HUGE lumps of salt. You can get someone to publish ANYTHING coming to just about any "conclusion" you want to write, so long as it is preceeded by some slightly feasable-sounding babble. Usually doesnt mean shit.)
 
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I wonder how many other businessmen took LSD and were successful? Sounds like a lot of psychedelic users are jumping on the "Jobs was a visionary because he used psychedelics" bandwagon to feel a little better about themselves...
 
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