Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with the late Steve Jobs, predicted “horrible problems” in the coming years as cloud-based computing takes hold.
Wozniak, 61, was the star turn at the penultimate performance in Washington of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, monologist Mike Daisey’s controversial two-hour expose of Apple’s labor conditions in China.
In a post-performance dialogue with Daisey and audience members, Wozniak held forth on topics as varied as public education and reality TV.
However, the engineering wizard behind the progenitor of today’s personal computer, the Apple II, was most outspoken on the shift away from hard disks toward uploading data into remote servers, known as cloud computing.
“I really worry about everything going to the cloud,” he said. “I think it’s going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years.”
“With the cloud, you don’t own anything. You already signed it away” through the legalistic terms of service with a cloud provider that computer users must agree to, he added.
“I want to feel that I own things,” Wozniak said. “A lot of people feel: ‘Oh, everything is really on my computer.’ But I say the more we transfer everything onto the Web, onto the cloud, the less we’re going to have control over it.”
Prior to Saturday at the Woolly Mammoth theater in Washington, Daisey and Wozniak had met once before, after a performance of the monologue in its original version in February last year.
Wozniak was moved to tears, but a year later Daisey came under fire when it emerged that sections of his one-man show dealing with the Foxconn plant in China where iPhones and iPads are assembled had been fabricated.
Public radio show This American Life, which had broadcast portions of the performance, went so far as to issue a retraction. Daisey, meanwhile, reworked his script, albeit without toning down his powerful delivery.
On the minimalist stage on Saturday, seated on plain wooden chairs, Daisey and Wozniak came across as a geek version of Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
The bearded, fast-talking Wozniak sported running shoes and a massive wrist watch. In the theater lobby, for Saturday only, one of the very first Apple I computers ever built was on display.
Many in the audience echoed Daisey’s concern about Foxconn’s work force, but Wozniak said he expected labor conditions in China to evolve as the nation grows richer.
“We know we [citizens and consumers] have a voice. We can speak [about labor conditions], but we can’t act like: ‘Oh, Foxconn is bad or Apple is bad,’” he said.
Daisey begged to differ: “I hear what you’re saying about that fact that everyone goes through an evolution, but it’s not as if the evolution was natural in the sense that we are the ones who brought the jobs there.”
While Apple designs its products in the US, all its manufacturing takes place in China — a sore point in an election year in which unemployment and a long-term exodus of manufacturing jobs overseas have been campaign issues.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US