Now Chovanec, who wound up in possession of much of the contents of that bedroom, has consigned a collection of the ephemera to RR Auction for sale. Items include Jobs' desk, its drawers filled with Reed College notebooks and work he did for Atari in the mid-'70s; the Bob Dylan 8-track tapes (and one Joan Baez tape) he listened to incessantly; a set of magazines that Jobs' father kept to commemorate cover stories about his son; Jobs' annotated horoscope generated by an Atari computer;
If it wasn't for a Volkswagen bus and a calculator, Apple might never have existed. At the time, late cofounder Steve Jobs was in his early 20s and strapped for cash, but hooked on the idea that everyone should be able to own a home computer. The only problem? Like many founders, he didn't have enough money to bring his vision to life.
And while it is true that Jobs was as charismatic as Clooney and as manipulative as Machiavelli, the legend we helped him construct served many purposes beyond pumping up his own ego. He was an irresistible force who knew that in order to bring to market the amazing technological wonders that bubbled in his imagination, he also had to become the Svengali of the digital revolution that was to be the hallmark of his generation.
The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think.
