Steve Jobs
Let me take a moment to add my thoughts to those already piling up about the news of Steve Job’s resignation from Apple.
As an unreconstructed Apple fan, user, and advocate this is a sad day. Having stuck with the company through its lean years, and how lean they were, having basked in the glow of its astonishing recent growth, and having been left feeling bewildered by its emergence as the leading technology company of all time, I must admit that being an Apple biased person has been quite a roller coaster ride.
When I hear others decry Apple technology I always ask myself whether they understand what technology is for. It isn’t to allow some geeks to bask in their technical brilliance. Nor is it some dull corporate cost saving method. It is an extension of our minds. It allows us to articulate and create in ways we could not before. It allows us to explore deeply into the corners of complex problems that were intractable before. It opens and extends our capacity for thought.
Steve Jobs understood this. Most other leaders of his era didn’t.
His realization of the creative aspect of technology is reflected in the attention he paid to design, to typography, and to illustration. He led the way in making technology easy to use. He realized it was a tool, not a difficult piece of equipment. Above all he realized that if we could make it ubiquitous we could unleash new ways of doing things, of communicating, and of learning. In all these aspects he was way ahead of any of his rivals.
He is, without question in my mind, the most important business leader America has had in decades. And one of its most influential ever.
My own connection with Apple started in my banking days and during my association with a friend – Carl – whose appetite for technological tinkering was matched only by his iconoclastic attitude to the stodgy bureaucracy we lived within. Together we broke the rules, which back then meant defying the rigid control exerted by IBM and its stifling – crippling – adherence to a centralized computing model. Our philosophy was close to that advocated by Apple: technology is an enabler not a constraint. It allows the creative boundaries to be pushed back. As I would now characterize it: technology broadens the space of possibilities. It allows us to overcome scarcity.
The most abundant resource available to us all is our collective imaginations. Our inventiveness. Our capacity to overcome our physical limitations. Steve Jobs understood this and pressed Apple into being an aspect of opening up the borders that circumscribe our ability to exploit that resource.
His vision will be missed. So I lament his decision.
But.
We should not devalue ourselves. Jobs would surely tell us, and we need to remind ourselves, that is us – we who make the progress. The technology helps. But it is our thinking and exploration, not his, where the value is added. So add his name to the long list of the great industrialists who have added to the accumulated ability of humanity to crawl away from the aeons long choke hold of poverty that gripped so many generations of our forbears. We need these people.
But.
The journey is a collective one. It is ours together. We would do well to remember that as we laud Steve Jobs. He deserves the praise.
So do we.
