"Death is very likely the single best invention of life," says Jobs. Photograph: Paul Sakuma/AP
Steve Jobs is currently being showered with plaudits for his commencement speech at Stanford, (there's an audio of it here). For those of you who'd rather read it, Bruce Sterling has a transcript on his weblog, along with some serious praise: "It deserves to be heard in full, especially if you are in its intended audience, new college graduates," urges Sterling.
Anyway, the speech is pretty good in terms of getting out the Jobs message: motivating people, understanding that the things you learn can all be useful in your life, and to appreciate the things you do. It's the kind of stuff some self-help guru is likely to repackage and churn out. iSucceed, perhaps?
Personally, I think one of the most important pieces of advice that I've ever read came from one of my literary heroes, Jonathan Swift, who wrote that "when a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign: that the dunces are all in confederacy against him". Unfortunately the dunces have never lined up against me, but I live in hope. Now that's not quite technological advice, but maybe it's helped me never read a ...For Dummies book.
So, in honour of Saint Steve's Advice To Students, here's this week's competition question:
What's the best piece of technological advice you've ever been given?
The writer of the best answer can look forward to getting their hands on a copy of the O'Reilly book Revolution in the Valley: Andy Hertzfeld's pieced-together recollections of How The Mac Was Made.
