Just finished watching Revenge of the Nerds (a 1996 PBS / OPB / Channel 4 production about the history of the computer revolution) because we're still waiting for Pirates of Silicon Valley. (I should have Pirates on hold as soon as I thought of it.)
Though this was provoked by Steve Jobs's death, I remember watching it the first time and had much the same reaction - I like hearing this story, not because it's an American success story - in South Australia, when I grew up, ambition was not a virtue and sudden accesses of money were very suspicious - but because it is a creation story.
And, like most creation stories, it's rich in circumstantial detail, but fundamentally mysterious. We still have no idea why we think of things... Kekule's dream, Woz's trip. Creation is not at its heart Apollonian. It's not even necessarily male.
It's doubly strange watching this 1996 production because it ends with Jobs being fired by Sculley (the sugar-water salesman) and fading into mere movie moguldom.
Even when he was young, Jobs's face was opaque in ways that Gates's wasn't. You could see, as he paused while he was speaking, that he ran his perceptions through some sort of mind-body matrix. It is in the body that the connections are made.
He continues to fascinate because he's the only one in the entire computer / wizarding bidness with a second act, with potential that wasn't yet visibly withered and gone.
