"Yes, I owe it all to the French."
We are all guided by our influences, even if sometimes we don't want to admit who they really are.
Just as Mark Zuckerberg would never admit to being moved by Dr. Ruth and Genghis Khan, so Larry Page would surely never concede to the subconscious influence of "Mork and Mindy" and the early novels of John Le Carre.
However, a Reuters report is now suggesting something so beautifully preposterous, so life-affirmingly unnatural that it will lift the spirits of the most downhearted.
For this report claims that Steve Jobs was influenced by the French. Yes, the French, the people who lent their name to Belgian fried potatoes.
Quoting a French engineer called Gerard Thery, Reuters says that when Jobs took one look at France's Minitel back in 1982, he hungrily dismantled it to see how this fine, magical box really worked.
Should the history -- or even existence -- of Minitel have escaped you, this was a rather fascinating box that Frenchmen placed on their home office desks in order to chat with someone who was not their wife.
(Credit: Tieum/Wikipedia)
It measured several yards across and had a crank... [Read more]
No comments:
Post a Comment