Stop asking Steve Wozniak what’s the next big tech thing

Steve Wozniak speaking to media at PayPal’s Innovation Hub in Singapore.

Steve Wozniak was in Singapore yesterday, and there was much rejoicing. He came for PayPal’s Fintech Xchange event – a day-long shindig meant to draw attention to the work PayPal is doing with local startups.

It’s always interesting when someone like the Woz comes to visit – the man is living Silicon Valley history, part of the original Apple duo, the yin to Steve Jobs’ yang. So naturally, when he talks people pay attention.

Whether he says anything of note, however, is another question.

Last year, our esteemed former China writer Paul Bischoff cast a rather harsh but fair eye to Steve’s recent record of public speaking. While I hear what Paul said, I think the real problem could lie with how we expect too much out of him.

The right questions

Case in point: during a media roundtable yesterday, journalists asked him about everything from Apple’s business strategy on self-driving cars to the future of smartphones to his favorite gadgets.

The real problem could lie with how we expect too much out of the Woz.

And sure enough, while he did his best to answer those questions, his answers were generic, safe, mostly harmless. He talked about how exciting virtual reality is, how game-changing the blockchain is going to be, how he thinks that Apple and Google are the top brands in the world right now.

Asked about self-driving cars, he launched into their history and how promising a technology that is. Having to name one company he thinks is shaking things up in Silicon Valley right now, he struggled through some musings before settling on Tesla. “A lot of what Elon Musk does is just driving towards that future we could have that’s so much more beautiful and not restricted by the way things were done in the past,” he said.

Do you see the pattern here? It’s not that his replies are wrong or non-intelligent. It’s that they are so, so vanilla. A founder starting today could probably give you those same answers, but we wouldn’t listen to her because she’s not a 40-year veteran. And why should we expect him to have some unique insight into what’s going on at Apple now, as if he’s privy to some honorary internal newsletter?

Building on the past

Look, I get it. The man’s a legend. For people in the tech business, he’s a totem. If you, the devout tech pilgrim, are standing in front of him, what do you even ask? Where do you even begin, in order to benefit from his wisdom?

But are the five gadgets he can’t live without really what’s going to be of value to you? Isn’t it much more valuable to try and figure out what this guy has learned from all these years in the trenches, what advice he can impart to those starting now, what he’s doing to pave the way for people coming after him?

Luckily, he had more interesting things to share later, during his fireside chat with PayPal senior VP of Asia-Pacific, Rohan Mahadevan. It was there that he highlighted the real value of industry figures like him: advice and education.

Speaking on stage, he said he enjoys the most being a mentor to younger people, those whose ideas can bring about significant changes to our everyday lives.

Cult of personality