Ashton Kutcher’s thoughts on playing Steve Jobs and the wider tech landscape [Video]

Ashton Kutcher, the star of the upcoming jOBS biopic, a film about the late Steve Jobs and his life before the launch of the iPod, sat down with The Verge’s Joshua Topolsky to talk about all things tech. In their 20 minute conversation, the two talk about Kutcher’s physical and intellectual investment in technology and tech culture.

Topolsky starts off the interview asking Kutcher about how his interest in tech originated, to which Kutcher admits that he was tasked with programing Fortran in college, but wasn’t even sure how to use his email. Kutcher was then inspired by a comment from his professor who said to Kutcher, “scientists discover problems, engineers solve them.” From there, Kutcher wanted to “grow up to be someone that solved problems.”

Topolsky also asked Kutcher about both his positive and almost infamously negative experiences with Twitter. Topolsky recalls when Kutcher was one of the most popular celebrities on Twitter or, as he puts it, ‘the Twitter evangelist.’ Kutcher explains that while he used to post things a bit more freely than he does now, he’s still big on the network and enjoys some (but markedly less) conversations that happen on Twitter.

Perhaps even more interesting, however, is Kutcher’s thoughts on how people are now more willing to retweet things now that Twitter has made it easier to do so. He says, “You used to type ‘RT’ and then whatever the thing is [tweet], which actually had friction in it. You had to copy and paste something, put in ‘RT’ and then repost it. And the friction that existed there caused people only to retweet things that had enough value that they were willing to put the work into doing the syntax to actually retweet it.” It’s a fascinating observation and perhaps entirely true for a great extent of Twitter’s users.

Topolsky wraps up the conversation by asking Kutcher about his preparation for the role of Steve Jobs in the upcoming biopic. Topolsky says “it’s kind of an egotistical move to say ‘I’m going to play Steve Jobs in a movie,” but Kutcher says it was never about being Steve Jobs, but rather more about portraying his character.

Kutcher then goes into detail about the whole preparation process which included creating a 14 hour SoundCloud file with various Steve Jobs presentations, learning to think about Steve’s motives to perform certain actions throughout his life, and lastly practicing Steve’s unique look, walk, and voice.

You can watch the full video by The Verge up above. jOBS hits theaters August 11th.