January 11: You Can’t Connect The Dots Looking Forward
"...you can only connect them looking backward."
Source: Stanford (Video)
Published: June 2005
You Can’t Connect The Dots Looking Forward
In his commencement speech for Stanford in 2005, Steve Jobs explains:
“Because I had dropped out of college and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class. It was artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture.
10 years later, when designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. The Mac was the first computer with beautiful typography. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them!
If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
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Did you appreciate the fact today?