Steve Jobs and the computer as a “bicycle for the mind”
“What is a personal computer? (…) there was an article in Scientific American in the early 70s which compared the efficiency of locomotion for various species (…) Condor was the most efficient and man came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list (…) but (….) man riding a bicycle was twice as good as the condor all the way off the end of the list and what it really illustrated was man's ability as a tool maker to fashion a tool that can amplify an inherent ability that he has and that's exactly what we think we're doing. We think we're basically fashioning a 21st century bicycle here which can amplify an inherent intellectual ability that man has and really take care of a lot of drudgery to free people to do much more creative work.”
– Steve Jobs, 1981
The co-founder and revered former CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, has repeatedly referred to the personal computer as a “bicycle for the mind” (1980, 1981, 1981, 1990, 1995). He has emphasized that this was a, if not the, central analogy for him personally.
This is supported by the fact that Apple took a full-page ad making the bicycle analogy in the Wall Street Journal on August 13, 1980, and that Steve Jobs and Rod Holt unsuccessfully suggested “bicycle” (instead of Macintosh) as the internal code name for the personal computer with graphical user interface.
The article from the Scientific American to which Steve Jobs was referring to when using the analogy, is almost certainly an article on bicycle technology from S.S. Wilson published in 1973.1 As shown in the graph from the article below, the “man on bicycle” was indeed more than twice as calorically efficient as the second place.
The Scientific American article did not include data on the efficiency of the condor, nor did the underlying works from Vance A. Tucker (1970, 1971). During Jobs’ lifetime no one seems to have challenged the condor assertion and it is naturally a bit challenging to get a good sense of why he may have made the mental association that “the condor won” more than 40 years after the fact.
However, my hunch is that Steve Jobs might have inadvertently switched the salmon with the condor due to the MacCready Gossamer Condor. The 1973 Scientific American article did discuss the bicycle for human-powered flight and in 1977 in California, the bicycle-aircraft named after the condor made headlines by winning the first Kremer prize for human-powered flight.
Commonalities
Designed for an individual human user: Both the bicycle and the personal computer are designed for an individual human user. Computers designed for individuals were a revolution at the time. The second aspect is user-friendly design. A bicycle with its saddle, pedals, and steering wheel is explicitly designed for a human user. Similarly, Jobs always sought to make it easier for humans to use Apple computers, most notably with a graphical user interface. Ease of use has remained a key factor for AI and is ultimately what enabled the ChatGPT moment.
Ownership by an individual human user: What the personal computer and the bicycle have in common and what starkly differentiates them from current AI, is that the individual user also owns the hardware.
Not the most energy-intense option: The bicycle is a transport mode that does not maximize horsepower compared to the motorbike, the automobile, the airplane, let alone the jet fighter. Similarly, Jobs did specifically not aim to maximize the computing power of Apple computers as a metric, especially in comparison to the larger computers used by businesses. He aimed maximize ease of use for individuals.
Dominance of biological brain power in the 1980s: On a bicycle the human is not just steering, the human is providing the power for moving forward. Looking at the computing power of 1980s computers it’s clear that the overwhelming majority of the brain power still came from the human user.
Differences
Lack of well-specified reference framework in target domain: It is not entirely clear what the equivalent of the efficiency-scale is in the target domain. The study of the energy requirements of animals shows scaling laws, where larger animals are able to swim, fly, and run more efficiently, as highlighted more clearly in another early 1970s paper. However, the higher efficiency enabled by higher scale does not really work well with the personal computer, which was all about offering a smaller computer with less computing power to more users. Something like “productivity on a personal level” is difficult to put on a scale. Maybe the argument is that humans + tools can beat scaling laws?
Complexity: Bicycles are not traditionally considered high technology. In contrast, modern computers and AI have extremely complex engineering and supply chains behind them.
General-purpose nature: The bicycle is a technical artifact with a specific, quite narrow purpose. In contrast, both the computer and AI are general-purpose technologies with a much broader field of application.
Agency: The bicycle is a classic tool without any decision-making power. Of course, it still has had an impact on society, such as an accelerant for the Victorian rational dress movement for more functional women’s clothing.2 However, this pales in comparison to the computer and AI. Especially, if we look forward and digital computing power continues to grow exponentially most computing power will come from machines – not humans, and there is a drive towards giving AI more and more autonomy and decision-making power.
Of course, one could also argue that the deep appeal of the bicycle analogy to Steve Jobs has likely been as much normative as descriptive. When Jobs reflected on the long-term future of the computer in the 1995 interview, he said:
“When you set a vector off in space, if you can change its direction a little bit at the beginning, it's dramatic when it gets a few miles out in space. I feel we are still really at the beginning of that vector and if we can nudge it in the right directions, it will be a much better thing as it progresses on, and I think we've had a chance to do that a few times.”
So, maybe the best way to understand the bicycle analogy is not as a description of the past or the future, but as a desirable ideal of human-centered technology rather than a race for computing power supremacy between powerful organizations.
Indeed, Apple has been significantly less eager than its fellow tech giants to monetize user data or to build giant centralized computer farms, instead making its revenue from selling personal hardware devices that excel at user-friendliness. Maybe, just maybe, it still has enough of Steve Jobs “bicycle, hippie, and liberal arts” spirit to offer a human-centered counter-vision to the technocapital-machine building up massive, centralized GPU clusters.
In the 1990 interview Jobs remembers to have read the article when he was about 12 years old. Based on the publishing date of the article and his birthday, he would have been at least 18 years old when first reading the 1973 Wilson article. However, I still believe this is the correct article. All the 1980s usages of the analogy refer to a Scientific American article in the early 1970s.
There are still cultural norms against female bicycling in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other conservative Muslim countries. In the words of the wise Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei: "Riding a bicycle often attracts the attention of men and exposes the society to corruption, and thus contravenes women's chastity, and it must be abandoned [by women but not by men]".