In the 21st century, computers, smartphones, and the Internet have joined to become a privacy nightmare for us. We've seen leaks, hacks, and privacy violations galore, to the point we're not even surprised by them anymore. That's why this video hasn't aged well at all.
Back in 1981, late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs went on ABC News' Nightline for an interview. There, he assured Americans that privacy wouldn't become a problem if people using them became computer literate.
The interview, hosted by Ted Koppel, is currently available on YouTube. It's a fascinating watch because it paints a picture of an era so far removed from our own it seems impossible. In the 12-minute segment, the host discusses some of the many ways computers were making life easier, like the automation of the subway, air traffic, and even grocery stores.. But there's one statement in there that rings true even today.?
After that is where the segment dives into the privacy worries of the time. But have no fear, here's Steve Jobs to tell you your fears are unfounded, and computers are actually great.?
"This is a 21st century bicycle, that amplifies a certain intellectual ability that man has," Jobs tells the camera. "One of these devices can free a person from many of the drudgeries of life and allow real humans to do what they do best, which is to work on a conceptual level, to work on a creative level."?
He was right about that of course. But that's when journalist David Burnham chimes in with a question of how computers amplifying the ability of man also gives them the ability to do bad things more efficiently.
At the time, Burnham brought up how the US Census Bureau used a punch card system to help locate Japanese Americans in the US in 1941, after World War II, which led to them being forced into internment camps. Flash forward to 2019 and that's still what you have going on in the US, with the immigration bureau using its computerised records and more to round up immigrants and force them into concentration camps.
"The government has the capacity by using computers to get all kinds of information on us that we're really not even aware that they have," Koppel says to Jobs. "Isn't that dangerous?"
"Well, I think the best protection against something like that is a very literate public, and in this case computer literate," Jobs replies. "And I think you're actually seeing that happen right now. In the personal computer area we've already reached approximately one in every thousand households in the United States, and I think over the next five or six years, that figure will be one in ten. Ultimately it will be one in one."
In retrospect, we can see just how wrong Jobs was. For the most part, people have become computer literate. They've had to, in order to keep up with modern-day technology. And yet, we're subjected to surveillance and privacy violations, more because of what's kept from us in the back end of the websites and software we use.?
So either Steve Jobs was lying to give his company a better reputation, or even he had no idea how bad things would get.