‘Life is about HAPPINESS:’ Apple co-founder speaks to a packed crowd at USI

Speaking as part of USI's Innovative Speaker Series, Wozniak recounted the early years of Apple’s formation, an era dominated by a counterculture which Wozniak said he “appreciated” but didn’t fully participate in.

Speaking at a rapid pace, Wozniak retold the often quirky reality of the 1970s tech industry, but he also lamented the rise of artificial intelligence and the role algorithms play in our everyday lives.

Here are five takeaways from Wozniak's speech and the subsequent discussion:

1. Education should leave room for students to make mistakes

"We were just dumb kids making up our own projects," Wozniak said. "Nobody in school was saying, 'Here's the project that we're going to, here's what you want to do.' A little bit of misbehavior came along with that, but we had the freedom the explore and think for ourselves."

Wozniak passionately made the argument that students and would-be entrepreneurs deserve the space to make mistakes and play pranks. Apple wouldn't exist, he said, if he hadn't been afforded the chance to explore his interests as a child.

He also spoke at length about the role computers can play in education. 

"My look at education comes from a different perspective," Wozniak said. "The important thing for me wasn't the knowledge of how you could use a computer in certain ways. It was about making it fun."

2. Happiness = S - F

"On the day I die, I want to be the happy guy that's laughing and smiling," Wozniak said. "I made up a formula for life. Life is about happiness and happiness is a formula: 'H equals S minus F.'

The "S" stands for smiles and the "F" stands for frowns, Wozniak said. He urged listeners to tell jokes and play pranks: activities he said unleashed creativity and new ideas.

He circled back to this theme many times throughout the night, and he argued today's tech products should be, above all else, fun to use.

3. 'Tech' doesn't mean what it used to mean

Wozniak giddily told the relatively young audience about a time before smartphones and millimeter-thin laptops. The first computers he got to play with used switches and dials to input basic programs.

What may seem like simple technology today was, at the time, incredibly complex. But Wozniak pointed out that in the 1960s and '70s, most devices could be taken apart and tinkered with or repaired by hand.

Now, as smartphones and laptops become increasingly difficult for users to repair or modify, Wozniak said it's important that tech enthusiasts fight for "their right to really own the products they buy." 

"If you buy apps today, everything is a subscription," he said. "Everybody just wants to make money off of you and nobody will really sell you something ...  and I don't really like that."

4. Artificial intelligence promises innovation but also poses risks

When the moderator asked Wozniak for his thoughts on Elon Musk's "Neuralink," a project to connect artificial intelligence directly to the human brain, Wozniak didn't mince words. 

"Elon Musk? Don't use that word around me. That's like a four-letter word for me," he said.

He went on to criticize how artificial intelligence increasingly makes "decisions for you and your life."

"The problem is, nowadays, sometimes it makes a guess that is just totally wrong," Wozniak said. "If you're a creative human, as I consider myself, you do not want somebody to say, 'I know what you're gonna do.'"

5. Higher education drives innovation and brings entrepreneurs together

"The university was where my intellectual freedom was really allowed to grow," Wozniak said. "The high school and first year of college is so important — you get the intellectual freedom to pursue what your desires are in life and what your passions are."

Wozniak credited the California "Homebrew Computer Club" with fostering a spirit of innovation. In the 1970s, the club largely consisted of professors and students at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkley.

He recounted how club members marveled over early prototypes of Apple's first computer.

Wozniak: A lifelong hacker and engineer 

Steve Jobs and Wozniak founded Apple Computer Inc. together in 1976, but Wozniak said his interests in computing and engineering date back to his early childhood.

His father was an engineer, but Wozniak said Wednesday night he had the freedom to pursue whichever career path he chose.

In the late 1960s, Wozniak found himself expelled from the University of Colorado Boulder after he hacked the school's computer system, but the expulsion did little to stifle his interest in computing.

Wozniak built his first punch-card computer with a friend in the early 1970s for a self-taught engineering project, according to Owen Linzmeyer's book "Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of The World's Most Colorful Company."

And, just a few years later, Wozniak designed the Apple I, a switch-board computer that lacked a display but nonetheless packed a punch for the time with its 8 kilobits of integrated memory. 

Wozniak also designed Apple's first consumer-level computer, the Apple II, which featured a color display. It came at a time when nearly all personal computers rendered nothing but black-and-white text.

The Apple II, along with Commodore's PET 2001 computer and RadioShack's TRS-80, were some of the first computers marketed to a mass audience. 

Wozniak temporarily left Apple in 1981 after suffering severe injuries in an aviation accident, and while he did eventually return to Apple, Wozniak severed ties in 1985 and sold most of his stock.

After leaving the company he helped build, Wozniak founded and co-founded other technology startups, including Privateer Space in 2021, which uses data analysis to track space debris in orbit around Earth.