Saturday, October 22, 2011

The deification of Steve Jobs ...

There has been so much written in the last days about the death of Macintosh computer founder Steve Jobs that it's been difficult to try to make any sense of it.

Reporter Tanya Gold, who works for the Guardian in London, has done a good job of stepping back from the endless wailing and rending of garments to offer some thoughts about the global mourning process that kicked into gear when Jobs moved on to a different operating system.

Here's part of her story with a link to where you can find the rest.

The deification of Steve Jobs is Apple's greatest marketing triumph to date

It is not enough to love your products anymore; when the people who created them die, you are now required to enter a kind of spiritual decline yourself

The deification of Steve Jobs was swift and amazing, an app that rose only in death. Jobs is now America's Princess Diana, a figure of tragedy, representing transformation, Jackie Kennedy being too long-dead to do it, and Michael Jackson too weird. I find this strange, because Jobs's real legacy was the way in which people now routinely ignore each other in public because they are playing with their iPhones and iPads. As ever with a new form of communication, one of the things you can do is communicate your indifference better.

Click here for the rest of Tanya Gold's story.

2 comments:

Government Funded Blogger said...

Steve has left the building.Apple will be right behind him unless there is a creative visionary of his stripe on board.

ViewPoint2010 said...

My sense is that there is not. It would be nice to think that there is a kinder, gentler, similarly creative Jobs Jr lurking in the background, but from reports, that is not the case. Never mind, there will be another visionary come along elsewhere in the industry. Soon, we'll have chips implanted in our thumb that will open doors, pay bills, provide full medical & dental information to our health care providers AND know what kind of pizza we prefer from whatever supplier! :-)