????蘋果公司（Apple）的已故首席執行官史蒂夫?喬布斯曾說過一段廣為人知的話：他在母校里德學院（Reed College）時旁聽過一門書法課，從中學到的一些美學知識啟發了他在第一代Macintosh電腦中采用多種字型和字體，并最終為整個個人電腦行業采納。

????“假如我從未旁聽過這門課，Mac電腦絕不會擁有多種字型或按比例間隔的字體。”喬布斯在2005年斯坦福大學（Stanford University）畢業典禮演講中表示，“而且，自微軟Windows模仿Mac之后，可能每一臺個人電腦都有了這種字體界面。”喬布斯說，直到很久之后，他才意識到那一門書法課對于個人電腦“豐富多彩的版面式樣”有著多么大的影響。“當然，我上大學時是不可能把未來的這些點串起來的。”他說，“但在十年后回顧這一切時，所有這一切都一目了然。”

????當谷歌的首席執行官拉里?佩奇回顧過去時，他意識到他受到的音樂教育，特別是他對于速度的迫切和執迷，在造就谷歌的核心元素方面發揮了重要作用。

????“從某種程度上，我感覺音樂訓練造就了谷歌的高速傳統。”最近佩奇在接受《財富》（Fortune）雜志采訪時表示，“在音樂中，你需要對時間有非常清晰的認知。時間基本上是最重要的東西。”

????佩奇在密西根州長大，演奏薩克斯，并學習了作曲。在密歇根大學（University of Michigan）上學時，他為一家利用軟件來制造音樂合成器的公司制定了一份商業計劃書。在這個要求軟件實時工作的項目中，他驚奇地發現了一個他認為大多數電腦軟件都存在的缺陷。

????“這太讓人驚訝了，我發現現代操作系統在實時表現方面相當糟糕。”佩奇說，“如果你從音樂角度考慮，假如你是一位打擊樂演奏者，你敲擊一下后，聲音要在幾毫秒后才會發出。”

????從谷歌成立的第一天起，佩奇對于速度的執迷便滲透到了公司之中。佩奇堅信，如果谷歌搜索引擎返回搜索結果的速度越快，其使用頻率就越高。他隨后對此進行了測量。由于不滿意毫秒級的反饋速度，佩奇對工程師們（包括開發算法和構建數據中心的工程師）施壓，要求他們考慮延遲時間。他維持了谷歌首頁非常著名的空白設計，因為這可以幫助文件更快地加載。直至今日，在搜索結果頁面頂端，谷歌仍然會告訴用戶，它用多少時間找到了搜索結果。搜索“Larry Page and speed”（拉里?佩奇和速度），在第一個搜索結果的鏈接上方，你會看到“約21,100,000條結果（用時0.47秒）。”

????Steve Jobs, the late Apple CEO, famously said that a course in calligraphy he dropped in on at Reed College instilled in him an aesthetic that inspired the typefaces and fonts of the original Macintosh computer and eventually those of the entire PC industry.

????“If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts,” Jobs said during a commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005. “And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.” Jobs went on to say that it didn’t become apparent until much later how that single course impacted the “wonderful typography” of personal computers. “Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college,” he said. “But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.”

????As Google CEO Larry Page looks backward, he’s realizing how much his musical education inspired critical elements of Google—especially his impatience and obsession with speed.

????“In some sense I feel like music training lead to the high-speed legacy of Google for me,” Page said during a recent interview with Fortune. “In music you’re very cognizant of time. Time is like the primary thing.”

????Page, who grew up in Michigan, played saxophone and studied music composition while growing up. During college at the University of Michigan, he developed a business plan for a company that would use software to build a music synthesizer. That project, which required the software to work in real time, opened his eyes to a what he saw as a flaw in the software that powers most computers.

????“It’s amazing to the extent I think that modern operating systems are terrible at being real-time,” Page said. “If you think about it from a music point of view, if you’re a percussionist, you hit something, it’s got to happen in milliseconds, fractions of a second.”

????Page’s speed obsession was baked into Google GOOG -0.28% from day one. Page believed, and later measured, that the faster Google’s search engine returned answers, the more it would be used. He fretted over milliseconds and pushed his engineers—from those who developed algorithms to those who built data centers—to think about lag times. He kept Google’s home page famously spare in its design because it would help the document load faster. To this day, atop the search results page, Google tells users how long it took to find answers to a query. Search for “Larry Page and speed” and above the first link you may see “About 21,100,000 results (0.47 seconds).”