In early November, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak spoke to the Cal Poly community in an event that kicked off the Noyce School of Applied Computing’s Distinguished Speaker Series.

The event, which was attended by a few hundred campus community members, began with opening remarks from Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong, College of Engineering Dean Amy Fleischer and the school’s director, Chris Lupo, who also moderated the talk.

“As you know, Cal Poly’s motto, pedagogy and our North Star is Learn by Doing,” Armstrong said in his opening remarks. “The Noyce School represents Learn by Doing at its best, and the Distinguished Speaker Series represents an invaluable opportunity to carry that forward.”

During the hourlong talk, Wozniak — also known as “The Woz” — spoke on a wide range of topics, from his own childhood and the spark that ignited his fascination with computers, to his at-times tumultuous partnership with Steve Jobs, to his plane crash in the early 1980s, his thoughts on AI — and the unconventional name that made it onto his college degree. 

“I was lucky enough to grow up in Silicon Valley,” Wozniak said, adding that his fascination with computers began when he was around 8 years old, when his father brought him to see an exhibition in San Francisco. 

“He held up a whiteboard with all these little drawings on it that looked like building tops connected by rope, and he said, ‘This is a chip we’re going to make with six transistors.’ Six transistors instead of one!”

Wozniak went on to speak about his and Jobs’ very first partnership in the early 1970s, when Wozniak built a “blue box” to allow people to make long-distance phone calls at no cost (Jobs handled sales). Wozniak, who designed Apple’s first line of products, the Apple I and Apple II computers, and helped design the Macintosh, also talked about the spark of inspiration that led to the initial development of the Apple I.  

Wozniak said that when he was a teenager, he had a poster of the Data General Nova — a type of minicomputer manufactured from the late 1960s through the 1970s — in his room. 

“I told my dad, ‘Someday, I’m going to own a 4K Data General Nova.’ He said it costs as much as a house. I said, ‘I’ll live in a car.’” The Data General Nova wound up influencing the design of the Apple I. 

Following a plane crash, Wozniak re-enrolled at UC Berkeley to complete his electrical engineering and computer sciences degree. But, as he told the audience, he was too well-known at that point to be there under his legal name. The name he chose?

“Rocky Raccoon Clark,” he said, as the audience laughed. 

When Lupo asked Wozniak about AI, he was emphatic about ensuring regulations on the technology. 

“You should know when the answers came from AI. We should be told that,” he said. “How is that AI trained on pieces of creativity that humans have created? You should be able to click on anything and say, ‘Where did you get this?’”

Lupo said in his opening remarks that the Distinguished Speaker Series aims to inform and foster connection with the Cal Poly community, the Noyce School of Applied Computing and the industries it serves.

“The intention behind this is to really inspire the students, the staff and the Cal Poly community in our discipline of applied computing,” Lupo said. “We have the opportunity to really create some collaborative exchanges and then also to bring people together as diverse thought leaders to really have this amazing experience here in front of you.”

On Nov. 19, Distinguished Speaker Series featured technology expert Tom Patterson. Patterson is the managing director for Emerging Technology Security at Accenture, where he is the global lead for quantum security and space security. The Distinguished Speaker Series will continue with new speakers announced in early 2025.