{"id":2656,"date":"2011-10-07T04:02:25","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T08:02:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/?p=2656"},"modified":"2021-10-19T06:48:28","modified_gmt":"2021-10-19T10:48:28","slug":"steve-jobs-a-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/steve-jobs-a-human\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Jobs: A Human"},"content":{"rendered":"

For my next column I was all set to write about the iPhone 4S, which was released to a flurry of reactions that were so-so.\u00a0 It will make an interesting column either way once it is crafted. However,\u00a0 it was only a few hours before I began writing it that I saw the news that Steve Jobs had passed away<\/a>.\u00a0 I tried several times to write the iPhone 4s article, but simply couldn’t.\u00a0 Not mentioning the passing of Steve Jobs seemed like exactly the kind of inhuman corporate coldness that drove me out of the IT industry for a while.\u00a0 Going on a long retrospective about him felt similarly dishonest.\u00a0 It’s not like I knew him, and the net is already flooded with well-researched eulogies about him.\u00a0 Most news agencies have these written ahead of time anyway, and just plug in the numbers when it happens.<\/p>\n

I considered the middle ground of stating that he was an innovator and wouldn’t have wanted the world to stop just for him.\u00a0 But even that felt like an excuse.\u00a0 Even if I knew him enough to be able to say that with confidence, there is something very wrong with this approach.<\/p>\n

A reminder for our times<\/strong><\/p>\n

Steve Jobs was an inventor (not a word that’s used to describe many people these days) at the dawn of the information age.\u00a0 The things that he did certainly played a big role in accelerating this zeitgeist.\u00a0 Yet I feel in his death a contrast that serves as a repeat of an ominous wake-up call that we’ve heard and too often ignored.<\/p>\n

Our time is all about faster, and faster, and faster.\u00a0 News travels around the globe in seconds: one cartoonist pointed out that the Twitter notifications about the east coast earthquake from a month ago might have actually outpaced the quake’s own seismic waves.\u00a0 We don’t think about the amount of data that’s sent each day.\u00a0 We don’t think about the pace at which we develop new technologies and new ideas.\u00a0 We can’t.\u00a0 It’s like trying to count leaves on trees while you drive down the highway.<\/p>\n

It was in recognition of this 24\/7 planet that I almost wrote a \u201cThe show must go on\u201d piece, but stopped myself.\u00a0 No it doesn’t.\u00a0 Sometimes the show does stop.\u00a0 We control the show; it doesn’t control us.\u00a0 And as the realization of his death ripples around the world and we ponder what it means, what I notice is just the fact that we’re pondering at all.\u00a0 We’re suddenly not concerned for a moment about kernel bugs or version numbers.\u00a0 We’re pondering a man instead.\u00a0 We’re stopping.<\/p>\n

The truth at twilight<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have a theory that it is in the moment of a person’s death and the initial recognition that follows that a person’s true character is revealed.\u00a0 When we hear that a person has died, our subconscious does a manual override of our cerebral functions, and processes the full totality of what we’ve lost.<\/p>\n

What I’m seeing is that we didn’t realize how much he had given to us until now.\u00a0 My FaceBook friends\u2019 page is flooded with RIPs about him.\u00a0 With what people are posting you would think that he had been their best man.<\/p>\n

I’m not saying this to make fun of my friends, but to rather recognize that we’re recognizing something.\u00a0 We are noticing that this man, or at the very least what this man did (is there a difference?) made it into our lives.\u00a0 He also broke the mold of people who normally fill that position.\u00a0 He wasn’t an entertainer or artist or a politician or a religious figure (though some would probably argue he had bits of all of those).\u00a0 He was an inventor.\u00a0 He created, we took his creations in, and we’re now understanding just how much richer our lives are for it.<\/p>\n

I could repeat what I’m sure many commentators are writing right now about the original Macintosh, or the iPhone, or any of his major advances.\u00a0 I myself remember taking a late 80’s Mac home with me from work to write my high school papers.\u00a0 But let me take a different approach.<\/p>\n

Were it not for him, we might not have ever known Woody and Buzz Lightyear, Lightning McQueen, Carl Fredricksen or Mr. Incredible.\u00a0 It’s way unfair to try to put all of the magic from an entire movie studio on one man, and truth be known Jobs was close to selling Pixar when Toy Story finally give them altitude.\u00a0 Yet all of our actions have consequences, and the consequences of Jobs’ purchase of Pixar include the creation of some of the most beautiful movies ever made.<\/p>\n

We cast our reflections<\/strong><\/p>\n

We can perhaps see this truth a little more easily in fictional characters, and its why the deaths of, say, Jim Henson and Charles Schulz.\u00a0 Nonetheless, it’s a truth that applies to all things we create.\u00a0 A part of us goes into them.\u00a0 Every object that you hold, everything around you that didn’t grow out of the ground, each one of them is a collection of people.\u00a0 One simple beautiful eulogy I saw summarized this idea.\u00a0 \u201cRIP Steve Jobs.\u00a0 Sent from my iPhone.\u201d\u00a0 Ponder that one a moment.<\/p>\n

My primary topic area is web hosting, and there is a link back to that.\u00a0 I wrote previously of my disgust at the fact that the smiling faces on the main pages of web hosts are usually someone who doesn’t have the first thing to do with that company.\u00a0 Perhaps I can use a related example to display the true horror of this approach.<\/p>\n

I was in a chain restaurant once: names of the guilty will be withheld.\u00a0 One wall had a timeline of the company’s history.\u00a0 It started with the first location opened by the founder.\u00a0 It proceeded through its development, with pictures of new products and new ideas that he introduced.\u00a0 Then suddenly \u2026 he’s not mentioned at all.\u00a0 Then late in the timeline the introduction of an animated version of him is.<\/p>\n

Think we missed a little headline there?\u00a0 Marketers would say \u201cno one wants to hear that\u201d.\u00a0 But in the most literal sense, they’re dead wrong.\u00a0 Yes we do.\u00a0 We ache in our polymer world to be touching something a bit more real.<\/p>\n

Now let’s see each others’<\/strong><\/p>\n

All that we own and the vast majority of what we’ve experienced are the sum total of others influence on us.\u00a0 Our great modern crime is forgetting that.\u00a0 If there must be a lesson that I squeeze in here to make this article sufficiently tech-related, it is to ask the entire IT world to please, please stop forgetting this.\u00a0 Be human again.\u00a0 The point of all of these toys is to enhance our lives, not be them.<\/p>\n

We have sped our modern world up to unfathomable, out-of-control levels.\u00a0 Steve Jobs was part of that acceleration.\u00a0 Now, for a moment, we’re stopping.\u00a0 I would argue that this is one of the most fitting tributes we can give to him.\u00a0 Don’t notice so much how much he affected our lives.<\/p>\n

Notice, instead, that that is what we’re supposed to be doing.\u00a0 It is the point of all we do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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