Much is being written today, and will likely be written for a few days, about the life and death of Steve Jobs. I was wondering why I felt so sad about the passing of Steve Jobs. Then I remembered the quote about the guy who fell to his knees crying at FDR's funeral. When a man next to him asked him, "Did you know the president?", the man replied,"No, but he knew me."
That's what the passing of Steve Jobs feels like. This man was given up for adoption as a child, led a fairly ordinary life in his early years, dropped out of college (which is probably something many more of us thought about doing than actually admit to thinking about doing) to lead a much more "adventurous" life, and always followed his own path. He lived the life we all hope to live even if we know we have the slimmest of chances of actually accomplishing all that he did.
The question is, why does it matter? As Matt Bai explains in The New York Times (and as The Onion, in its typical fashion, more succinctly and accurately puts it), Steve Jobs had an ability to understand how people could benefit from something they never thought of before. Many people say he was all about marketing but even the best marketing people can't get people to buy something they don't need or don't like.
More than anything, as the obituary in The Economist pointed out, he utilized his experience in the regular, everyday layman's world to viscerally understand what people do and don't like at a time when the technology world was almost entirely populated by people who only knew technology and very little of anything else. He didn't give the customer what they were asking for; he thought about what they could use and found a way to give it to them in a way that the average person can use anytime, anywhere. In fact I'm even typing this on the pre-installed 'Notes' app on my iPad as I wait for my NJ Transit train to pull out of NY Penn Station. (Although I have the 'Wi-Fi only' iPad so I had to copy and paste this into Blogger when I got home.) That explains why he was such a pioneer in education, where a child's curiosity can naturally get piqued if he or she can quickly and fundamentally grasp the device or program they are using.
He wasn't a perfect person but perhaps that's the most important part about Steve Jobs. He accomplished so much not despite his many imperfections but because of them. He was quoted as saying he's been a lousy father (then again, supposedly so was Gandhi), he was called a micromanager, he was considered egotistical (to the point that the New York Times reported there are 317 patents with his name as one of the co-creators). Yet he understood people in a way very few people really do.
It was because he embraced his imperfections that he understood the imperfections in all of us. It was because he understood that we are imperfect beings that he sought to give us things we could understand (such as the point-and-click usability of the Mac) but knew where to draw the line when it crossed over into something we would never get (like the restriction on users accessing the operating system on a Mac).
The world will miss Steve Jobs because he was so unique. But the fact that he was unique and there aren't many people in the world that can see things from the average person's point of view is the saddest reality of all and why we will miss him. He had such a profound impact on our lives while exemplifying talents that we all assume we have yet none of us really do (again, as The Onion astutely points out.) The official White House statement hit the nail on the head when it said:
"The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented."
We will all miss not just Steve Jobs' contribution to the world but his fundamental ability to understand the people in the world both as individuals and as a collective society.
Fortunately the world he helped create gives us the ability to keep his digital memory alive, such as his commencement speech at Stanford University six years ago.
Rest in Peace Steve Jobs. As a Buddhist, I hope you have found nirvana.
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