ZD NET -- July 10 -- At the
San Francisco Social Networking Conference, Steve Wozniak, Apple co founder and personal computer legend, shareded some fascinating insights into the modern world of social networking and mobile phones. I was able to organize a one on one interview with Steve (thanks Marc Lesnick & Mark Brooks).
A: What is your vision for the mobile phone in eradicating poverty?
Steve: I don't see a great connection. I believe the roots out of poverty are step by step development of society.
A: What do you think the big opportunity missed is today for Apple? for MSFT? for IBM? for Google?
Steve: I don't feel many opportunities are missed. I wish they were doing more great things.
A: What was the best thing you learn from teaching 10year olds?
Steve: Wow? I used to think everything in life should be fun, but when you're teaching, if you can get the kids motivated and they want to learn, they want to come to class, that's worth a lot more than what you teach them. The teaching content is worth less than motivating them.
A: How do location based services fit into the future of mobile social networking?
Steve: When we started hearing this idea of the push technologies ten years ago or so, it was the idea that when you were near stores that had items they could sell you, you would get pushed a movie or a coffee or whatever. It always sounded like something you should be wary of, and I've never seen it take off very well. I love that people are thinking that way. Young people are the users, and that's who you have to really listen to.
A: Social media scaling is a huge problem?
Steve: Why do I want 5000 friends anyway? There's nothing I can do with that number of people.
