I was never a regular consumer of Steve Jobs' or Apple's products. I have some, but I'm a longstanding PC user and was never down with the iEverything lifestyle. Not my thing. And I was also never part of the Jobs-As-Techno-Prophet hagiography.
That being said, two things simply cannot be denied in the wake of his passing:
1. Jobs, along with the other ground-zero innovators of the home-computing movement, are responsible for creating the world we are in today. Whatever else he may have been, Steve Jobs was one of those rare individuals whose vision and drive to realize it dragged the rest of humanity's sorry ass across the yardlines of cultural evolution. Those who read/watch my stuff know that I am unabashedly glad to live in The Age of The Nerd, where each day makes the intelligent, the creative and tech saavy more and more vital to the world as the brutish and the pre-mechanization "strong" more and more obsolete; and I know that I owe a great deal of the thanks for this Age to Jobs. His name, unquestionably, belongs next to Edison, Ford and the other Titans who built the modern world.
2. Anyone dying in their mid-50s sucks, but a great thinker and creator dying so soon is a fucking tragedy. I know that, for a lot of people, there's something poignant or even "just" about the idea that cancer especially and death/disease in general "not caring" how important the afflicted is - "we're all equal in God's eyes" and all that. Honestly, I've never found that sentiment particularly comforting and certainly can't see what's "just" about it. Someone like Steve Jobs changed the entire world multiple times in just a few decades, how much further would we have moved ahead if he'd had a few more? There's no "balance" in that... no "great mystery." The whims of fate, destiny, whatever aren't things we should happily going along with - we should treat them like obstacles to be overcome. To me, that's what makes sense.
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