Steve Jobs as one of the most influential business leaders of our time Term Paper

Steve Jobs as one of the most influential business leaders of our time - Term Paper Example Sadly for Steve, he never knew the love of his parents who later on decided to get married and then have another child, a daughter they named Mona. The unwanted baby was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs who by profession were an accountant and coast guard veteran respectively. They lived in the Mountain View area of Silicone Valley where as a boy, Steve was influenced by his fathers affinity for all things electronic. He would spend many a day and hours learning how to take electronic things apart and put them back together from his father. It was this activity that kick-started Steve's lifelong love affair with all things electronic and technical. Always a man ahead of his time, a young Steven had problems adjusting to regular academic life. He was known as a prankster at school who needed to be coaxed into completing his tasks. Though unfocused and unwilling to sit down and be taught, the principal of his school and his teachers agreed that his boredom and restlessness came from the fact that his intellectual ability was not challenged at his current academic level. The boy tested with a high school learning curve as early as the 4th grade but his parents refused to let the school accelerate him to the proper academic level as dictated by his intellectual quotient exams. By 1971, Steve found himself enrolled at Homestead High School where he would go on to meet Apple co-founder and future business partner Steve Wozniak. Wozniak was, at the time, attending the University of Michigan. Both men had an affinity for computers and other common interests, including an independent mind attitude about how things should be done in the world. It was also this close affinity that would lead to their parting of their business ways later on in their lives. (â€Å"Steve Jobs†) Although Steve enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, his lack of direction in life led hi to drop out after only 6 months. He would then spend 18 months in creative classes where he would develop a keen interest in calligraphy, which became one of the most notable aspects of Apple Computers later on. In 1974, Steve tried his hand at working for a computer software company and found himself employed at Atari. But even this exposure to the business side of computers left Steve aimless. He spent a period of time trying to find spiritual fulfillment in India along with his use of psychedelic drugs. This was the time when the aimless boy began to find himself and develop into an innovative thinker, far ahead of his time. By 1976 he had convinced Wozniack to team up with him so they could establish Apple Computers with its head office located in his parent's garage. Steve Job's vision at this time was to create a personal computer far different from the mainframes that offices were using this era. His was going to be small enough to fit in a corner in the home and be easy enough for even a child to use. With Wozniack's help, the two men created the first personal computer for home use. Their first Apple computer was sold for $666.66 each. It was from that sale that the home office began to grow to eventually become the juggernaut computer software and hardware leader that it has now become. But the Apple computer as Steve Wozniack had put it together was far from perfect. Jobs knew that there was room for improvement. He just could not put his finger on what that improvement needed to be.

There is no such thing as a neutral question. Evaluate this statement Essay - 3

There is no such thing as a neutral question. Evaluate this statement with reference to two areas of knowledge - Essay Example For instance, â€Å"Why do you think he is leaving the company?† This is apparently a neutral question since the best answer is obviously known to the person who is leaving the company. The questioner’s interest is superficial or mere curiosity or else the question would have been placed with the person concerned. In the most elementary form, neutral questions are those which are asked by innocent children who express their curiosity over anything they see or hear. Questions like â€Å"From where does babies come?† are common neutral questions since the children who frame these questions do not have any pre-conceived notions and can be satisfied by any random answer. In such cases, the questioner, i.e. the children have no inherent interest in the questions other than curiosity. Since, as already explained, in a case of a neutral question there is no apparent interest in the mind of the questioner therefore such questions are generally unemotional and open. However, this paper is concerned with the statement that there is no such thing as a neutral question. In the sociological perspective, the weight of a question is determined by the social context, i.e. answers can vary depending on whom the question is targeted. Therefore, â€Å"a sociologist who does not subject his own questioning to sociological questioning will be incapable of making a truly neutral sociological analysis of the answer it receives† (Bourdieu, 41). In the realm of science, knowledge is based on real questions with concrete and experimentally proven answers. A question cannot be neutral since the questioner expects a pre-conceived answer, i.e. a hypothesis based on which his future work will be constructed. The most critical aspect of scientific knowledge is that a scientist can ask a question of whys and hows for the reason that he will be seeking an explanation for his question. Now, the question remains whether in science it is