“Your Generation Will Change the World Using Computers”
Sometimes he did it from a stage, sometimes across a table, and occasionally—almost casually—on the back of whatever paper happened to be at hand. When he did, the language was rarely abstract. It was direct, confident, and almost unnervingly specific.
That is what makes this business card so powerful.
Offered in our upcoming auction is a Steve Jobs signed NeXT business card, signed and inscribed in blue ballpoint:
“Daniel, Your generation will change the world using computers. Let’s go! steve jobs.”
It is not a slogan. It is not marketing copy. It is a statement of belief—written privately, for one person, at precisely the moment when Jobs himself was rebuilding his future.
The Moment Behind the Message
The card was given to Daniel Turner, the original recipient and consignor, during EDUCOM ’88 in Washington, D.C. Turner attended the conference with his mother, a journalist for The Chronicle of Higher Education, who had interviewed Jobs during his Apple years and was meeting him again to discuss his new venture.
Their conversation took place not on the exhibition floor, but in the privacy of Jobs’s hotel suite. There, Jobs spoke freely about computing, education, and where software was headed. At the end of the meeting, he handed Daniel his business card, then paused, turned it over, and wrote the message by hand.
Turner has preserved not only the card, but the memory of the moment. His video testimonial, included with the lot, recounts the encounter with clarity and restraint. A signed provenance statement accompanies the piece.
A Familiar Pattern: Jobs and Prophetic Inscriptions
This was not an isolated act.
In 1980—eight years earlier—Jobs inscribed an Apple II Reference Manual with a strikingly similar message:
“Julian, your generation is the first to grow up with computers. Go change the world!”
That manual was offered by RR Auction in 2021 and realized $787,484, underscoring how deeply collectors respond to Jobs’s rare, forward-looking inscriptions—especially those addressed to the next generation.
Seen together, the Apple II manual and this NeXT business card form a quiet through-line in Jobs’s thinking. Across decades, companies, and circumstances, the message remained consistent: computers were not just tools; they were instruments of change, and young people would wield them best.
The Card Itself
The off-white 3.5 x 2 business card lists “Steven P. Jobs, President” and bears the NeXT logo designed by Paul Rand—an emblem that reflected Jobs’s insistence on clarity, precision, and design with purpose.
It includes NeXT’s Palo Alto address at 3475 Deer Creek Road and remains in very fine condition. The card has been encapsulated and graded PSA/DNA NM–MT 8.
When the Prediction Became Reality
During the 1988 conversation, Jobs spoke about software architecture with particular intensity—especially his belief that PostScript was not merely a printer language, but a display language. That idea became central to the NeXT operating system.
Years later, when Jobs returned to Apple, that same NeXT architecture became the foundation of macOS—and ultimately iOS.
The operating systems that now power billions of devices trace their lineage directly to the ideas Jobs was articulating at that moment.
Which gives the inscription its gravity.
Ink as Evidence
“Your generation will change the world using computers.”
They did.
This card captures Steve Jobs not in retrospect, but in real time—recognizing a transformation before it was obvious, and addressing it personally, in ink.
The Steve Jobs signed NeXT business card is currently offered in an upcoming RR Auction. We encourage readers to watch Daniel Turner’s video testimonial to hear the full story in his own words.
Some artifacts commemorate success.
Others reveal conviction.
This one does both—quietly, confidently, on the back of a business card.
