Has anyone had enough of Steve Jobs, yet? Let's give the man credit where credit is due. Jobs was a hypocritical megalomaniac with great design sense, great vision, and great timing--one of the most successful businessmen of all time. It is an undisputed fact that from the beginning he exploited his own employees, eventually relying on Chinese slaves to do his toxic production dirty work--all for our privilege to pay $400 for a revolution in phone technology at $75/mo while he plays quadrillionaire. Now, that’s genius. Interesting to note that in the Jobsian world American's can buy them, but not make them.
Mr. Jobs took credit for pretty much everything having to do with computers. He didn't invent the processing capability, but he did push Woj to build it. He didn't invent the PARC interface/mouse, but he eliminated three of its mouse buttons and that's more than that bastard Gates did. Brilliant, and so Zen! Apparently, his great timing could be your bad timing. If you bought one of his expensive computers and a few months later a major change was released, you were kidding yourself if you thought you could get a discount or a means to move up to the new product you barely missed. Ever ask an Apple Store ‘genius’ when the next change is coming out? They can’t say. It’s a secret.
And, how come we never hear about Jobs screwing up the original Apple--only that part about his heroic resurrection and comeback to slay the soda pop boogeyman. I mean, look what he gave us at Pixar--after Toy Story, I'll never be the same. It is well documented that Jobs routinely crushed employees and second-party developers who were at the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing. He even screwed his own family, I mean, his own daughter? A former hippy, New Age, alternative NoCal visionary? Sounds more like another classic tale from the long, dark heritage of American capitalist greed.
I guess to take credit for an expensive technology that can emulate reality to an extremely high and entertaining degree and that provides communications and internet service, too boot, it’s worth the pain. Plus, Jobs is unquestionably responsible for simply the most stunning, visually beautiful computer experience, period. But after his deification, at some point we ought to ask just what Jobs’ computer revolution and its concomitant expansion into gadgetry do for us?
If you make an honest examination of American life in the ole 21st, the abiding effect of the computer revolution has been the virtual addiction of most First World people to gadgets that steal our time, our money, and our souls. For all we've gained, we’ve arguably lost an equal, if not greater, amount--in terms of quality of work, numbers of jobs, industrial production capability, untold frustration, and, most precious of all, our personal time. Time to think, to breath, to watch the world and others doing the same. Time to simply be is rendered less and less useful while more and more expensive. When do we even have time to consider whether or not any or all of this is really worth a damn? And, it’s all made in China and Korea, no less.
The overwhelming and undeniable benefit of ubiquitous consumer computer use has to be the internet and Jobs did not create that--Al Gore did, or the military and academia. Whatever. And, ironically, the internet became the glorious tool it now is because of Google, not Apple. In fact, whether or not Android stole from Apple the way Microsoft did so long ago according to the Gospel of Jobs, were you to remove internet search-related apps from the iPhone or iPad, they would simply become very pretty, very expensive video/game/mp3 players. No, Apple never exploited anything Google did. And, it's better buying mp3s, book/ebooks, and movies from Apple than Amazon. O-tay.
Barely mentioned in the glowing nostalgia is the tragic likelihood that Steve Jobs was bipolar, a textbook manic depressive; and, like most of them, he was talented, engaging, and light years beyond most--in spite of being an utter and complete ass. Yeah, like Edison, Jobs belongs up there at the top of the America's Brilliant Scoundrels Who Changed the World list. Carnegie, Ford, and Gates are just going to have to play second fiddle, apparently. But, is he really up there with Benjamin Franklin? Really?
Isn't the time for canonization over? At the end of the day, while his life-sucking gadgets remain, he's gone and his beloved and admired megalomaniacal quest for fame, fortune, and control is over. That is, until we make the next one. I hear this guy Zuckerberg takes long walks and is comfortable bandying about our future--whether in front of the cameras of 60 minutes or just vibrating away in there inside his cute little curly-haired pate.
All right, how about some more porn on Facebook!
Thank God for geniuses!
/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_design
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