The post is also wrong/misinformed on a number of things. Da Vinci did intend to build a number of his plans, but was thwarted by the fact that he lived in conflict-ridden Renaissance Italy. For example, his design for a gigantic bronze horse never became a reality as his patron used the bronze for making cannons.
Nobody ships everything they work on. This is a creators' myth that I don't know why keeps getting perpetuated.
Da Vinci, among many other things, built some of the Milanese navigli which are still there for the people to enjoy almost 6 centuries later
I live on one of them (Naviglio della Martesana) and it's beautiful
It seems a provocative piece looking for attention. We are talking about it because it’s extreme position, not for its insights.
I hope the author reviews his article and does a second take with a more informed and critical opinion.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_inventions_of_Leon...
Is he overrated? It depends on what you value and how you're keeping score.
To Da Vinci it happened several times, he spoke and had relations with some of the most powerful people of his time: Medici, Sforza, Borgia, Francis I (king of France) and for each one of them he designed and often built infrastructures for their cities.
Even the Sultan of the ottoman empire Bayezid II asked Leonardo to design a bridge for him, in 1502
It would have been the longest bridge in the world at the times, MIT tests proved his project was solid and centuries ahead of times, in 2011 Norway built a bridge based on that design and Instanbul Is thinking about it as well.
So, all in all, he wasn't so bad at doing business.
Whether he had business acumen wasn't really my point. But it's obvious his business acumen isn't his legacy. His amazing art, brilliant ideas, and diversity of ideas is his legacy.
You do realize that the above distinctions did not exist in Leonardo's lifetime?
Second, I'm sure there were people in Leonardo's lifetime who recognized the differences between those with exceptional artistic talent and those with exceptional business acumen. I can't imagine any reason why such distinctions would not exist then.
Years ago, alone of my consulting customers sent me a 40 pound giant book of Da Vinci’s notes, art, inventions, etc. Amazing corpus of intellectual curiosity and exploration, not to mention all the great art.
> Leonardo had no trouble distorting reality either, the only difference is that Jobs could actually make these ideas happen.
What ideas exactly? Selling computers Steve Wozniak designed? Releasing an MP3 player that looked better than previous ones? Removing smartphone keyboards?
Some of his inventions couldn't be built during his time either, so it wasn't simply that he always lost interest. Seems a bit unfair to mention design flaws but not point out that he was designing machines that required materials that didn't exist yet.
Of particular interest is the author's equivocation of Jobs' Reality Distortion Field. The author makes it seem as if it was Jobs' ability to distort the world to create something unexpected, but most of us use the term to describe how Jobs could make people believe all sorts of dumb things while in his presence (and the effect wore off when not in his presence, when people realized these things were indeed dumb). It's not a positive thing.
Comparing steve jobs to Leonardo is a discredit to both steve jobs and leonardo.
The mark of a Genius is an insatiable curiosity about a wide variety of subjects and the willingness to jump into every one of them without regard to other people's expectations. Da vinci was unparalleled in that respect. The breadth of his interests is what makes him so great. Execution is always limited by circumstances like political climate, patrons, resources etc. Given the uncertain times that Da vinci lived through, it is an absolute miracle that he was able to do as much as he did. To dismiss it all by using platitudes like "Real artists/engineers" ship" is the height of ignorance and hubris.
Further reading:
* The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Vols I & II (Dover publications)
* Leonardo on the Human Body (Dover publications)
* Leonardo, The Complete Paintings and Drawings by Frank Zollner (Taschen Publications). This is a huge book but worth every penny. I believe it was later republished in multiple volumes due to its size.
Claiming da Vinci is overrated to Jobs because Jobs shipped more is on the same bar as saying Beethoven is overrated because his music is not suitable for a disco club and is less profitable.
[1] https://theconversation.com/four-ways-in-which-leonardo-da-v...
Steve Jobs was an engineer. He saw 10 years into the future and made it happen.
I prefer to think of Da Vinci as a proto sci-fi artist. It'd be like calling Jules Verne a hack for not actually making his time machine...
