TIME Managing Editor Rick Stengel (left) and Steve Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson at 92nd Street Y
Walter Isaacson, author of a new Steve Jobs biography, spoke with TIME‘s Rick Stengel on January 24 at 92Y about the significance of Jobs’s contributions to the business world and industries he revolutionized.
As compiled on our Storify page, audience members shared their observations and reports on Twitter during the talk. One noted that Stengel asked Isaacson: Could Jobs have been “nicer”? “Maybe his reactions were instinctive,” Isaacson responded, “but when I asked him, he said ‘This is who I am.’”
Could a “nicer” Jobs have been as successful? “Could he have put that filter in place and said, ‘I’m going to be just as effective as I am now, but I’m also going to bite my tongue and stop myself’?” [Isaacson] wondered. “That is a fundamental question in life.” If he didn’t quite offer an answer, Isaacson did point to the company’s unusually high retention rate, and suggested that, contrary to conventional wisdom, it was Apple’s culture – not its products – that ultimately set it apart. “Creating a great product isn’t the hard part,” Isaacson said. “The hard part is creating a great company that will continue to create a great product that will be at the intersection of creativity and technology.”
Another interesting piece of information shared that evening: Isaacson informed his next biography might be of Ada Lovelace. Read more reports from audience members on our Storify page.
Related: Google’s Marissa Mayer joins Normal Pearlstine at 92Y on March 27. Get your tickets now.
Joel Salatin with Dan Barber: A New Kind of Farmer
Joel Salatin (left) with Dan Barber at 92nd Street Y on January 23, 2012
Self-described libertarian, Christian, environmentalist and capitalist Joel Salatin, who had a star turn in the movie Food, Inc., was at 92nd Street Y on Monday with Dan Barber, chef and co-owner of New York’s Blue Hill restaurant and Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Their ”top shelf” talk was reported by WNYC’s Amy Eddings:
I was intrigued by Salatin’s call for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing freedom of food choice. “Carve out a spot for artisanal food commerce, like we did for home schooling,” he said. “We have a government that says it’s okay to eat Twinkies and Cocoa Puffs and Mountain Dew, but it’s illegal to drink raw milk and eat compost-grown tomatoes and Aunt Matilda’s pickles.”
He also spoke glowingly of the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund. He sees the three-year-old organization as the “NRA of food,” going after “overzealous food inspectors” and helping small- and mid-sized farmers like him who are developing dynamic, local food economies. There’s a lot on the website about raw milk, which I blogged about recently.
Joel Salatin said “historic normalcy” is a “domestic culintary delight.” Food tastes better. He said that, judging from the number of rock star farm-to-table chefs and sustainable, happy meat butchers, people are already discovering this, He said he wants to take it to the next level.
