I am a PC as well as a Mac user. I use many of Apple’s inventions: MacBook, iPod, iPhone, iPad, and iTunes. These are good products. I once wore an Apple T-shirt to a 7/11 store and the storekeeper said he is an Apple user too. “Oh, these products are so good that only thunder can cause a crash.” Yet when Steve Jobs passed away, the cult he had developed is leading one to wonder the real legacy he has left if we leave design and functionality temporarily aside.
Jobs was named one of the greatest innovators of our time by President Obama. Many consider him to be a greater technologist than Bill Gates. It is not always a good idea to draw parallels between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, but since much of their territories overlap, it is difficult not to see one in terms of the other.
Jobs seemed to be the cool guy, more popular among younger generations of technology users. Think for a moment: what has his coolness and popularity amount to for us as users? Bill Gates, with his Microsoft products, left us more productive and efficient with writing (Word), speaking (PowerPoint) and number crunching (Excel). With these tools we can produce something useful. Jobs tapped into our inner urge to have fun by luring us into the wonderland of instant gratification where the boundaries of work and entertainment collapse in our palms. Yes it is our fault for wanting to multitask or multislack, and yes there are productive uses of many apps that promise to enrich us in all facets of life. However, each facet can be fragmentized and diluted, as the temptation is high to move on from one thing to another with the ease his products provide. We all know that at times we have to move beyond the illusion that work is play, to draw lines around different spheres of our lives for some necessary boundaries.
Gates is by far a greater visionary who succeeds in diving into our potential needs, while Jobs taps into our wants. Jobs leads in his innovation by following where the crowd wants to go. For a time, Jobs refused to enter the field of e-reading because he believed people would not read much in text format, until Kindle emerged, after which truckloads of books were shipped to Apple factories for scanning, not necessarily due to a conversion to the belief in literacy, but because there is a big pie out there someone else is eating.
Jobs was a good marketer, but not necessarily a great innovator. Malcolm Gladwell wrote in a recent issue of the New Yorker that Jobs’ genius is in tweaking someone else’s products, including Word into Pages, and PowerPoint into Keynote, and Excel into Numbers, though he could get rather nasty when someone else is trying to do the same, such as creating an Android phone using the same touchscreen concept he thinks only he can claim.
As the names of his products seem to suggest, the man was wrapped around himself into a small package, vehemently defending his own little “i” world of business, epitomized by the Apple headquarter that he built before his death. His “i” world is also too closed for the greater good. I can understand the need for copyright protection not to share iTunes libraries, but as an inconvenienced user, I really cannot see the wisdom or good will in the petty fight to keep an innocent Flash out of his products.
Jobs was a capitalist who didn’t spend more time with philanthropy, which happens to be Gates’ passion. One could argue that this is just a personal choice no one should point a finger at. However, like salt of the world, wealth gives taste only when it is spread out and it will not do much good when it is piled together. There is a saying in Chinese that one of the greatest tragedies in life is that you die before you get a chance to spend all your money. Samuel Johnson also says that “ it is better to live rich than to die rich. ” Both become footnote to Steve Jobs’ life.
Popular as he is, I do not see Jobs as ever having the kind of impact that Gates is having (and will continue to have through his foundation) by making most of his wealth available to cure malaria, polio, or better lavatories in the developing world. Is this just a flash-in-the-pan urge of a capitalist to use his money in order to feel good? Without some deep-seated belief, no sentiments will drive one to give up 95% of his wealth to build a foundation for the greater good. I trust that Gates and his wife truly believe “everyone deserves the chance to live a healthy, productive life.”
As the Jobs fever continues, allow me to challenge today’s youths to model Gates, not Jobs, so that the world will not be littered with Jobs wannabes who cannot innovate and will not care. As an entrepreneur, Jobs may be doing his job, but Gates opens gates for many. If life is measured by impact, then Gates is by far a much greater hero of our times.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Mediocrity the only product of copycats
I was recently invited to speak to a group of new Chinese students about plagiarism: its definition, its moral implication and academic consequences. As a recent New York Times article the China Conundrum exposed, plagiarism has emerged as a problem among the newer crops of Chinese students on US campuses, many of whom are undergraduate students sent to the US to study by their middle class to affluent families, before they have developed the maturity to live and study independently in a totally new environment.
Faced with plagiarism charges, some play the language card to explain their behavior, but such excuses are getting increasingly lame, as universities have stepped up in their effort to educate international students about academic expectations in the United States. I am confident in students’ change of behavior with increased awareness and better guidance. However, I noticed that sometimes plagiarism does not come from moral choices to lie, but from the failure to be themselves in the work they produce. I heard from students who say that all they did is to use notes by a fellow student who took the course in a previous semester to find out what the “correct answers” are, or how they are correctly written. Their English professor LJ Littlejohn, however, explained that he is interested not in their perfect answers in “perfect English”. It is assumed that they as non-native speakers of English, start with bad English and that’s what language institutes are for. LJ said he is more interested in their own thoughts even if they are expressed in their imperfections.
This led me to think of an issue bigger than plagiarism: do we dare to be original in our thoughts in the first place? To me traits to assert oneself as an individual thinkers are harder to cultivate than language skills. And quite honestly, the need to develop critical thinking is pressing in the United States too. However, there is at least a common recognition of its virtue, and various efforts to develop such thinking habits.
Once people fail to recognize their own uniqueness as individual thinkers, a slippery slope will follow, leading them eventually to mediocrity. In copying someone else’s “correct” answers, how are we supposed to develop the competency to come up with our own answers some day, to address the increasingly complex problems we are going to face?
Believe me, this is not an issue faced only by new students in a different culture. Mature elites in the middle classes in China are all the worse when it comes to originality. I once worked for a leading consulting firm in China and I was baffled by the successful consultants’ urge to copy someone else’s work or even life style, even though most of these consultants have received western education. One of the reasons of such mediocrity is that those people have learned predominantly knowledge and skills in their disciplinary areas without stepping further to examine the environment and process with which some of their accomplishments have been produced.
When I went back to China, I also saw that medium-sized cities are copying things bigger cities are doing, and smaller cities were copying from neighboring cities and on it goes. Today, in the urbanization of China’s countryside, I see leaders trying to do the same, instead of figuring out local strengths and specialties, as well as individual talents each area has to offer. It is extremely upsetting to me as I see places losing their character in such imitations.
I blame it on our educational system that has deviated from traditional intellectual wisdom to lead independent, unique lives, or “the spirit to be independent, and the freedom of thought” as described by scholar Chen Yinque.
In recent years, there is much debate on the question raised by one of China’s leading scientist Qian Xuesen: why aren’t we producing masters in disciplines? To produce masters, do not try to learn only from the accomplishments of another country. Instead, flip the process and start to create conditions that would produce talents and masters. Shakers and movers of the world are rarely brought up to be copycats.
I believe that we ought to fight a cultural war against mediocrity. There is no use trying to produce the Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg of China unless we create conditions conducive to the unleashing of human potential. Creativity and innovation are popular topics in the Chinese media right now, but how are we supposed to have these qualities without recognizing individual strengths and potentials?
As a start, we ought to step out of the comfort zone of standardized testing as a predominant way to teach and test students, future citizens of the society. We get what we measure. With its all advantages, which can still be utilized, standardized testing alone reinforces the mentality that there are one and only answers to complex problems. Such testing fails to allow students to examine phenomenon from multiple perspectives and to come up with solutions grounded in thorough understanding of a variety of perspectives, stakeholders and interests. Complex problems deserve sophisticated interventions. You cannot expect sophisticated solutions to come from people who do not believe in their own unique talents.
Yet I do not think that we are simply victims to this kind of education. Each and every one of us can become solutions to the problem to start to develop the habit of original, deliberate thinking. We can then perhaps influence people we are in touch with. This change will not occur unless we all recognize that we are all unique individuals capable of thinking creatively and critically. Remember, a life as an imitation is not worth living.
China Daily, Nov 08, 2011
Faced with plagiarism charges, some play the language card to explain their behavior, but such excuses are getting increasingly lame, as universities have stepped up in their effort to educate international students about academic expectations in the United States. I am confident in students’ change of behavior with increased awareness and better guidance. However, I noticed that sometimes plagiarism does not come from moral choices to lie, but from the failure to be themselves in the work they produce. I heard from students who say that all they did is to use notes by a fellow student who took the course in a previous semester to find out what the “correct answers” are, or how they are correctly written. Their English professor LJ Littlejohn, however, explained that he is interested not in their perfect answers in “perfect English”. It is assumed that they as non-native speakers of English, start with bad English and that’s what language institutes are for. LJ said he is more interested in their own thoughts even if they are expressed in their imperfections.
This led me to think of an issue bigger than plagiarism: do we dare to be original in our thoughts in the first place? To me traits to assert oneself as an individual thinkers are harder to cultivate than language skills. And quite honestly, the need to develop critical thinking is pressing in the United States too. However, there is at least a common recognition of its virtue, and various efforts to develop such thinking habits.
Once people fail to recognize their own uniqueness as individual thinkers, a slippery slope will follow, leading them eventually to mediocrity. In copying someone else’s “correct” answers, how are we supposed to develop the competency to come up with our own answers some day, to address the increasingly complex problems we are going to face?
Believe me, this is not an issue faced only by new students in a different culture. Mature elites in the middle classes in China are all the worse when it comes to originality. I once worked for a leading consulting firm in China and I was baffled by the successful consultants’ urge to copy someone else’s work or even life style, even though most of these consultants have received western education. One of the reasons of such mediocrity is that those people have learned predominantly knowledge and skills in their disciplinary areas without stepping further to examine the environment and process with which some of their accomplishments have been produced.
When I went back to China, I also saw that medium-sized cities are copying things bigger cities are doing, and smaller cities were copying from neighboring cities and on it goes. Today, in the urbanization of China’s countryside, I see leaders trying to do the same, instead of figuring out local strengths and specialties, as well as individual talents each area has to offer. It is extremely upsetting to me as I see places losing their character in such imitations.
I blame it on our educational system that has deviated from traditional intellectual wisdom to lead independent, unique lives, or “the spirit to be independent, and the freedom of thought” as described by scholar Chen Yinque.
In recent years, there is much debate on the question raised by one of China’s leading scientist Qian Xuesen: why aren’t we producing masters in disciplines? To produce masters, do not try to learn only from the accomplishments of another country. Instead, flip the process and start to create conditions that would produce talents and masters. Shakers and movers of the world are rarely brought up to be copycats.
I believe that we ought to fight a cultural war against mediocrity. There is no use trying to produce the Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg of China unless we create conditions conducive to the unleashing of human potential. Creativity and innovation are popular topics in the Chinese media right now, but how are we supposed to have these qualities without recognizing individual strengths and potentials?
As a start, we ought to step out of the comfort zone of standardized testing as a predominant way to teach and test students, future citizens of the society. We get what we measure. With its all advantages, which can still be utilized, standardized testing alone reinforces the mentality that there are one and only answers to complex problems. Such testing fails to allow students to examine phenomenon from multiple perspectives and to come up with solutions grounded in thorough understanding of a variety of perspectives, stakeholders and interests. Complex problems deserve sophisticated interventions. You cannot expect sophisticated solutions to come from people who do not believe in their own unique talents.
Yet I do not think that we are simply victims to this kind of education. Each and every one of us can become solutions to the problem to start to develop the habit of original, deliberate thinking. We can then perhaps influence people we are in touch with. This change will not occur unless we all recognize that we are all unique individuals capable of thinking creatively and critically. Remember, a life as an imitation is not worth living.
China Daily, Nov 08, 2011
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