I read Playboy for the articles. No, seriously.

If you are a fan of the late great Steve Jobs, you’ve probably read this year’s timely biography, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Well, I think that the next best thing to read, to get a whole lot of insights about this brilliant mind, is When Steve Jobs Met Andy Warhol, written by David Sheff, and appearing on the freshly outed January-February 2012 issue of Playboy USA. You know, the one with Lindsay Lohan on the cover.

Actually meeting controversial artist Warhol (he of the Campbell soup cans fame) during the birthday party of a young Sean Lennon back in the 1980′s only serves as a backdrop to a long and winding interview about everything Jobs. (Warhol eventually gets jealous of Keith Haring, which should be juicy trivia for you art fans.) <corrected>

A number of moments stood out. For instance, Jobs being exuberant about Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid, who Jobs declares should be considered as a national treasure. Even more telling: Jobs rails about how Land was kicked out of his company, which he considers as an act of stupidity. He didn’t know it yet at the time, but he himself would eventually suffer the same fate.

And it turns out that, ten years before it was born, Jobs predicted the rise of the internet. Of course he didn’t know what to call it back then, but he called it a “nationwide communications network.” Sheff pressed Jobs to elaborate on this vision of the future, but Jobs could only say that it will be something “very big and very good.”

Jobs has always been a health buff (the juice budget for the original Mac team was $100,000 a year), so it seemed tragic that he would eventually succumb to cancer. And yet this was a man to whom time was the most important thing in the world (his answer to when Sheff asked him what is most valuable to him), and he moved as if time was running out.

Talk about prescience. In many ways and incidents, Jobs was almost a prophet.

Perhaps the article’s highlight for the author was how Jobs lent him an early Mac to write his article on… and the Mac ate his work, much to his horror. Jobs had to call in tech support who would then labor for hours to recover the precious interview, only to end up giving yet another insight about life in Apple under Jobs.

Wonderful writeup. See? You should be reading Playboy. For the articles.

And if you have to ask about the Lohan shots… she looked pretty, but her Marilyn pictorial looked too safe. Almost too bland. Okay, okay, so I look at the pictures too…

Art

Art is a long-time editor for a number of technology publications. He is a Palanca-winning writer whose day job is to try to be as serious as possible while being a management consultant and lecturer. His favorite noodles: chapchae.

email: art@technoodling.netwebsite: http://www.technoodling.net