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“Out to get you?” I said. I had no idea what he was talking about.
Well, he picked up the phone and called someone at the Computer Center. “These programs … Mr. Wozniak should be billed for this computer time.”
Then I found out what I’d done. I’d run my class five times over its annual budget for computer time. I didn’t even realize there were budgets. I thought if you’re in a computer class, you get computer time. That was logical to assume. But now I realized I ran up a whole lot of money on his account, and my best guess is he was using me to get out of it. I didn’t think they would actually charge me, a student. A freshman. But I was scared because the amount he was talking about was in the thousands of dollars—many times the out-of-state tuition money.
So that’s how it became very clear to me, at the end of that school year, that I was not going to make it an issue with my parents and try to go back to Colorado. I was on probation for computer abuse. I wouldn’t let my parents find out. I didn’t want them to get billed this huge amount of money. So that’s how I decided to go to De Anza Community College the next year, instead of going back to Colorado like all my friends.
What really bothers me when I think of this now is, they shouldn’t have charged me. They should’ve praised me for doing these brilliant programs all on my own.
And I did get an A-plus in that class.
• o •
Now I was back home and attending De Anza Community College. I spent a lot of time designing and redesigning computers on paper, which is what I’d been doing in high school. Like when I took the manuals of popular minicomputers at the time (the pizza-box-sized, rack-mounted computers from Varian, Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment, and other companies in 1969 and 1970) and redesigned them, over and over, on paper so they would take fewer chips and run more efficiently.
By the time I finished at De Anza, I had literally designed and redesigned some of the best-known computers in the world. I’d become an expert on designing them, no question, because I’d redesigned their prototypes so many dozens of times. I’d done everything but build them. There was no doubt in my mind that if I ever did build them, I could get them to work. I was this virtual expert—and yes, I mean that in the software sense of the word “virtual.” I never built those computers, but I was so entranced by and familiar with their innards that I easily could have taken any one of them apart and rebuilt it so that the computer would be cheaper, better, and more efficient.
I never had the courage to ask chip companies for free samples of what were then expensive chips. A year later I would meet Steve Jobs, who showed me how brave he was by scoring free chips just by calling sales reps. I could never do that. Our introverted and extroverted personalities (guess who’s which) really helped us in those days. What one of us found difficult, the other often accomplished pretty handily. Examples of that teamwork are all over this story.
• o •
Once, at De Anza, my quantum physics teacher said, “Wozniak. That’s an unusual name. I knew a Wozniak once. There was a Wozniak who went to Caltech.”
“My father,” I said, “he went to Caltech.”
“Well, this one was a great football player.”
That was my father, I told him. He was the team’s quarterback.
“Yes,” the teacher said. “We would never go to football games, but at Caltech, you had to go just to watch Jerry Wozniak. He was famous.”
You know, I think my dad was the one good quarterback Caltech ever had. He even got scouted by the Los Angeles Rams, though I don’t think he was good enough to play pro. Still, it was neat to hear from a physics teacher that he remembered my dad for his football. It made me feel like I shared a history with him. The teacher once even brought me a Caltech paper from back in those days with a picture of my dad in his uniform.
I didn’t get along with all the teachers, though. I was taking an advanced-level math class, and the teacher caught me not paying attention. (I was trying to figure out how to write a FORTRAN compiler in machine language for the Data General Nova.)
I was just at the first line where you have to enter something and store it in memory when he said: “You’ve got so much potential, Wozniak. If only you’d just put yourself into this material.”
It stung me the way he said that in front of the whole class. That wasn’t necessary. I just wanted to sit in class and do whatever it was I felt like doing. Maybe I was bored, I don’t know. I was the sort of person who read the book, took the test, and got good grades in subjects like math.
• o •
It was also at De Anza that I got this mental turnaround on politics. I started seriously thinking about whether the Vietnam War was right or wrong. Who was it helping, and did we have any place there?
Back in high school, I was for the war. My father told me our country was the greatest in the world, and my thinking was like his: that we had to stand up for democracy versus communism; and the reasons why, stemming from our Constitution. I had never thought deeply about political issues aside from that, and I was really for my country, right or wrong. I mean, I was for my country the same way you root for your school’s team, right or wrong. At the University of Colorado, the University Republicans Club was one of the only two clubs I joined (the other was the Amateur Radio Club).
But 1 started to wonder why so many people were protesting the war so visibly. A lot of academics and journalists were talking about the history of the Vietnamese people and had explanations for why the U.S. position was wrong. It was a civil war, involving treaties, agreements, and a history that didn’t affect the United States one whit. The trouble is, I could find no intelligent academic reasoning coming from the pro-war side, just the constant refrain that we were doing good. They could only say that we were there protecting democracy.
One of my biggest problems was that South Vietnam, which we were supposedly protecting, wasn’t even close to a democracy. It was more like a corrupt dictatorship. How could we ever stand up for a dictatorship? I started seeing that there was a lot more truth on the side of the people against the war.
The people against the war were also talking about how good peace was compared to war. Sure, the world can’t live in perfect peace and harmony, but it’s a good ideal. I had come to learn of Jesus, from my friend Randy Adair in college, that he always tried to find ways toward peace. Although I’m not a Christian per se, and don’t belong to any religion, what Jesus the historical figure stood for were things I stood for, and those stories Randy told me about him struck a chord with me emotionally. I didn’t believe in violence or hurting people.
At De Anza, I thought deeply about the war. I considered myself to be athletic and brave. But would I shoot a bullet at another human being? I remember sitting alone at the white Formica table in my bedroom, coming to the conclusion that I could let someone shoot at me, but I couldn’t shoot back.
I thought, What if I’m in Vietnam and I’m shooting at some guy? He’s just like me, that guy. He sits down just like I do. He plays cards and he eats pizza, or the equivalent of it, just like normal people I know. He has a family. Why would I want to hurt this person? He might have his reasons for being where he is in the world—and Vietnam had its reason—but none of these reasons ever touched me in California.
From that standpoint, I could see how this war could be a pretty dangerous one for me. Because I was morally and truthfully a conscientious objector in every sense. But the military only counted you as one if you were in a church (which made you exempt from conflict duties), and I had no church. I had no religion. I just had my own logic.
So I wasn’t a conscientious objector, I just objected to my personally having to kill or hurt anyone.
Chapter 5
Cream Soda Days
When I was about nineteen, I read the Pentagon Papers and learned what was really going on in Vietnam. As a result, I started to have some major conflicting feelings and some nasty fights with my dad.
By then he was
drinking heavily, and he wasn’t the greatest opponent to argue with. But I had a new truth that replaced the old one even more strongly. I started to believe in peace. And I began to realize how far governments would go in order to get people to believe them.
For one thing, the Pentagon Papers showed what the CIA and the Pentagon people truly knew, and that the president was being carefully coached to put words together and lie to the American people. He was saying the opposite of the truth to trick the American people into thinking they should actually support the war. For instance, the papers got right down to the Gulf of Tonkin incident—which never happened the way the government said it did. The papers also said how, in every battle, the public was always told that ten times as many Viet Cong as Americans died, despite the fact that we had no way to count them. And most Americans believed this crap. The Pentagon Papers documented this deliberate deception.
Learning about that was one of the hardest things I had to deal with in my life. You see, I just wasn’t raised to believe that a democracy like ours would spread these kinds of lies. Why was the United States government treating the American people as the enemy and purposely duping them? It made no sense to me.
And the worst thing that came after that, for me, wasn’t the Vietnam War itself, but the pain and stress it caused people. That’s because, as I was becoming an adult, I started gaining a new ethic—a profound care for the happiness and welfare of people. I was just starting to figure out that the secret to life— and this is still true for me—is to find a way to be happy and satisfied with your life and also to make other people happy and satisfied with their lives.
Even in high school, where I believed in truth with a capital T, I was willing to change my beliefs if someone came along to show
The Gulf of Tonkin
Not everyone reading this is going to remember this incident, but finding out about it was instrumental in changing my own feelings about the Vietnam War.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident was an alleged attack on two American destroyers (the USS Maddox and the USS C. Turner Joy) in August of 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin by North Vietnamese gunboats. Later research indicates that most of the attacks did not actually occur.
According to the Pentagon Papers and various reports, the attacks were pretty much made up by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. The U.S.-supported South Vietnamese regime had been attacking oil-processing facilities in North Vietnam, but it was the CIA that helped plan and support it in order to give the administration a good reason to involve the U.S. in the conflict.
me something better. That’s what the Pentagon Papers did for me. They pointed out that even the president was subject to the pressures of the military-industrial complex, the major institution of our land. And after reading this, I decided not to vote, that it wouldn’t matter either way. I figured that pretty much I’d get the same life no matter who was elected. I thought it was better not even to go into the voting booth.
But I did vote a couple of times. I voted for a guy named George McGovern, who promised he’d find a way to stop the war. I voted for Jimmy Carter, because the words he spoke seemed to come from the same philosophical point of view as my own. He believed, as I did, that war was a last resort and not a first.
I voted for George W. Bush in 2000, because I thought it would be nice to have an average Joe kind of person in the White House instead of a smart, well-educated one. Someone who could only speak in very small words. Okay, I’m joking. The fact is I voted for Ralph Nader. But since all the pundits said that a vote for Nader was a vote for Bush, I now tell people I voted for Bush just to watch their jaws drop.
Seriously, though, I still think about this whole era with a lot of pain. Being brought up by my dad, who’d taught me that we had the best government in the world and that our government was the best one there ever could be even with its flaws, well, that kind of fell apart. He told me the purpose of the government was to take care of its people and make things better for them.
During the Vietnam War, of course, there was a mandatory draft. When you turned eighteen, you had to register. If you were a college student, you would get what was called a 2S deferment; otherwise you would be classified as 1 A. That meant that any day the military could draft you and send you off to boot camp.
Once you were 1A, the government had a year to draft you. After that, you would be exempt. That’s why not everyone who was 1A wound up serving.
I submitted a report card to the San Jose draft board in order to get my 2S deferment, but I didn’t submit one of the proper forms the government required to show you were a college student. By mistake I only sent in my report card.
A couple of months later, a big delay, I received notice that the San Jose draft board had voted five to three to make me 1A. What? But I was a student.
This is when I decided that I would go to prison or Canada or, more likely, try to get let off by a judge rather than go to Vietnam. In fact, a judge in San Jose—his name was Judge Peckham—had let a couple of guys off as conscientious objectors despite their lack of membership in a church.
One of those people let off had been one of the brightest math stars at my high school, Allen Stein. Quite a coincidence. So I had good reason to expect the same in my situation.
So since I was 1A anyway, I took a year off from school to program computers and earn money to pay for my third year of college and buy a car.
Then an amazing thing happened. The U.S. Congress created a draft lottery. That meant that those of us who were 1A would know the likelihood of our being called up. This was so it wouldn’t be random. That way, you would know your chances— and I thought it was great. It helped me plan my life.
The way the draft lottery worked was your birthday determined what order you got called in. They would assign ever one’s birth date to a number from 1 to 366. So January 1 might be 66, January 2 might be 12, it was totally random.
Well, during the week before they announced the results of the lottery, I got a feeling I have never had before or since. A feeling of physical warmth, like I was going to be protected and get a high number in this lottery. I had a stronger level of certainty than I would ever have let myself feel about the unknown. I can’t explain it. I’m not a superstitious person in any way. I have
always believed in reality, the truth, and the provable. But this was so certain in my head. I rode my bike around, just smiling and smiling and smiling about it. I couldn’t stop. It was a wonderful, positive feeling, and I couldn’t ignore it and pretend it wasn’t there.
And sure enough, I read in the newspaper the day of the draft lottery that I got number 325. A great number! That meant it was virtually certain I wouldn’t be drafted. It’s so weird. I got such a great number, but I wasn’t even surprised or elated. I felt like I’d known it all along. The feeling I’d had was that strong.
But then something terrible and unexpected happened.
About a week after I got my draft lottery number, I got a letter from the San Jose draft board. It said—in one sentence—that they were granting me a student deferment after all.
This, after taking months to notify me that they’d voted five to three not to grant my student deferment when I deserved it, was bad enough. But worse, it also meant that in a later year they could make me 1A a second time.
I stood there with the letter in my hand, stunned. They were playing tricks with my life. Dirty tricks. They used the application I’d made for a student deferment as an excuse to grant it to me now, knowing that I already had a great 1A number.
• o •
From that point on, I saw that the government would do whatever it could to beat a citizen, that it was just a game. And this was the exact opposite of the way I had thought of government my whole life. That episode taught me an important lesson about government, authority, even the police. You couldn’t trust them to do the right tiling.
Now I had to go back to the draft board and request to keep my 1A—which was what I�
��d had anyway—and keep the same number. Luckily, they agreed.
I can’t even describe to you the shock and disgust I felt at our
government: that they would play this kind of game with my life, that they didn’t care about people the way my dad had taught me. I’d thought the government was here to protect us, but that turned out to be wrong. I now believed the government was just out to do what was good for the government and would lie about anything they could get away with. They were not there to do sensible things, and they played with my life in the worst possible way.
From then on, my dad and I were at complete odds. I never trusted authority after that. That’s too bad, because since founding Apple and all, I’ve met lots of good people in the government. But still, this hangs over me. I can hardly trust anything I read.
So between the time I was a kid, when my dad taught me extreme ethics, and the time I realized what was going on with the Vietnam War, I changed profoundly, a full 180 degrees. I became skeptical. I stopped believing blindly in things. It was a major turning point. I lost the trust I’d always had in institutions of all kinds and it has never really returned.
I swore to myself I would put up my own life before letting something like the Vietnam War ever happen again to young kids.
• o •
Maybe you’ve seen pictures of me from the early days and thought I looked like a hippie. I guess I did, a little. But let me tell you, I was never a hippie.
I tried to be a hippie, but I could never be what they were— not in high school or even in college when all that protest stuff was going on. I’d try to hang out with hippies because I stood with them politically, but they’d usually ask me to leave because I wouldn’t use drugs. I still wanted to hang around them because I felt my mind was so open—as open as theirs were—and I got what they were saying. I wanted them to be open with me, but their drugs got in the way. They didn’t trust me because I wouldn’t do drugs with them.