The second most interesting thing I know about Steve Jobs is that - by his own account - the crucial course he took at college was not in coding but in calligraphy. But the most interesting thing, which I learned from this terrific article, is that Jobs drove the only car in the US without number plates.
It was a perfect Steve Jobs gesture because it was a zen version of megalomania, an unassertive version of aggression, an in-your-face version of abnegation.
It had an absurd sort of practicality - presumably to maintain some sort of privacy by not showing his number plate to the world. But what is less private than being the only car in the country without a plate?
It was also technically illegal, but for fascinating reasons explored in the article, Jobs had presumably calculated - rightly - that he was unlikely to be prosecuted.
It was a gesture that was both rather splendid and utterly fatuous and futile and trivial.
It must have taken a lot of thought.
I bet Thomas Pynchon wishes he'd thought of it first.
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