Michael Moore in Liberty Plaza (Zucotti Park) -10/5/11

Steve Jobs – Culture Bearer or Culture Destroyer

Steve Jobs is dead.  We all die.

He was an active member of the human committee of change that caused so much change in my lifetime.  Personal computers transformed the planet.  They also made it easy to turn paperwork into an abstract digital and make outsourcing millions of American jobs elsewhere possible, in the flash of an eye.

Change is inevitable.

The PCs were from the early part of his career.

Coming out of retirement to give vision to APPLE, I see him in something of a Henry Ford role.  Although he did not invent the computer, the same way that Ford did not invent the automobile, Jobs had a similar knack of finding a better way to mass produce computer technology into the market place.

Hand held mobile technology with narcissistic names like iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad became the eye candy necessities of the upper end of the American middle class.  I assume that “i” stands for information and not the “I” of ego.

I read one tribute that in China, tears were shed at the news of his death.

In all fairness to the slave labor producing this expensive, obsolete in six months, eye candy technology over there, perhaps a fitting epitaph of Steve Jobs life and work can be summed up in fitting tribute:

APPLE, the Nike of hand held mobile technology.


Whatever.

Life goes on.