A Tribute toSTEVE P. JOBS

Abstract

Many in the media have compared the late Steve Jobs to innovators like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. I like to think of Apple's 1984 slogan, computer for the rest of us, as indicative of Jobs's importance to the computer industry. But before I go further, I must confess my bias. I am an Apple zealot. My long history with Apple products started way back in 1979 when I graduated from my PhD program. Reflecting on my experience, we can see how Jobs and his team at Apple brought technology to higher education and health care. The as a Productivity Tool My first computer, an Apple II, was a godsend. It provided me with the ability to type and quickly edit handouts for class and make them available on computer paper, thus avoiding mimeos. (Are you too young to remember mimeos? See www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0wUcCInJ2o.) I used Apple Writer for word processing and VisiCalc to calculate student grades. Recalling the painstaking task of making edits without changing the order of the pages I had typed, I wished I could have used my computer for typing my dissertation. As I upgraded to the Apple lie with a second floppy disk drive, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I used this machine to produce two cookbooks (Appetizers and Desserts), which sold on Micro CookBook, a product developed by my brother's company (Virtual Combinatics) and one of the top-10 home software products in 1983 (http://apple2history.org/appendix/aha/aha83/). Using the computer for my own work inspired me to investigate how computers were being used in health care. In 1981, I attended the first NIH National Conference (Computer Technology and Nursing) and my first Symposium on Applications in Medical Both conferences changed the direction of my academic career. Like Jobs and his partner Steve Wozniak, who were working to make computers available to everyday people, my mission was to make sure that nurses could enhance and augment their practice by using such tools. I started to teach about computers for nursing in 1982 and wrote about the need for all nurses to be computer literate by the turn of the century. On the advice of an associate dean, who told me that if I wanted faculty to vote for a computer course I would need to demonstrate that this was an important topic, I hosted a computer conference at Boston University. More than 360 people attended! Recently, I pulled out the syllabus for NU 501: Computer Applications in which I typed on myApple IIe. The course was a combination of lecture and hands-on interactive experiences. I would borrow the Apple lie computers we used in the school's administrative offices for our evening computer lab and return them to their proper places at the end of class. I also convinced the School of Nursing to do an experimental graduate program for two nurses to specialize in computers in nursing: Barbara Paganelli (now project manager consultant, Flechter Allen Health Care System, Vermont) and Jeanette Polaschek (clinical consultant, Orion Health, California). Both of these nurse pioneers have been quite successful! My first refereed publication, a comparative analysis of computer literacy for nurses, was typed on that Apple IIe. I vividly remember sharing a floppy disk with my co-author as we wrote, edited, and reedited the manuscript. A for the Rest of Us and a Bicycle for the Mind As I progressed as a teacher, so did Jobs and Woz at Apple. Jobs had read a study of locomotion and found that condors were the fastest species and humans were in the middle of the pack. But the locomotion of a person on a bicycle was faster and more efficient than that of a condor. For Jobs, the computer was a bicycle for our mind, enhancing our innate abilities as human beings. This concept resonated with me. This tool could enhance my abilities to teach, and it could enhance a student's ability to learn. What more could you ask for? …