post / June 30, 2026
Steve Jobs and the bicycle for the mind
Tracing back the origins of Steve's quote.
In the 1990 Library of Congress film Memory & Imagination, Steve Jobs described the computer as a tool for amplifying human ability:
Humans are tool builders. We can fashion tools that amplify these inherent abilities that we have to spectacular magnitudes. For me, a computer has always been a bicycle of the mind.
The chart is from V. A. Tucker's "The Energetic Cost of Moving About", published in American Scientist in 1975: volume 63, number 4, pages 413-419.
Here are the pages: