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On October 5th while surfing the web on my iPad, I received a notification pop-up that informed me the news of Steve Jobs death. It simply said, “Steve Jobs died today”. I literally stopped and just stared at the screen for what seemed like eons. Then I composed myself and went to the Apple website to find out if it were true, sadly it was not a hoax. Steve Jobs demonstrated what is right with the United States in the fact that we are a country filled with innovators. He was born to unwed grad students and then adopted by a working class family. He did what we all think is the thing to do, which was to enroll in college. He soon realized it was not where he was meant to be, his genius was bigger than the university walls.
I believe soon the history books will be re-written to include Steve Jobs mark on modern technology. He is right up there with the Wright Brothers, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, & Albert Einstein, etc., etc., etc. He was a thinker who let his mind and passion lead him to create a device that has literally changed modern day society. The foundation of the personal computer was developed in his mind, which then expanded from a motherboard into devices that I cannot phantom living without. For me the love affair began with a simple 2-gigabyte nano iPod, where I was able to store more music than I ever imagined. I don’t know what I would do without my iPhone 4 with more than150 apps. I use it each day including listening to music, which helps me get through the workday. Then there is my MacBook Pro that saved me when my PC laptop crashed while I was creating the first blog pages of PaisleyPerspective. Most recently, there is the iPad that helps me not have to carry my beloved MBP everywhere.
Some individuals commented that the technology developed by Steve Jobs put many non-tech savvy businesses out of business. But I say he has shown what a dream and passion can become. My favorite words spoken by Jobs while giving Stanford University’s 2005 Commencement address are “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life…Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
In conclusion, I am not professing that Steve Jobs was perfect, he himself revealed that was far from the truth. However, what he was able to do was use fear to his advantage; in addition to the big boys of the time IBM and Hewlett-Packard underestimation of innovation, to bring home computing to the masses. When we do not have a previously conceived idea of what we want to do, we oftentimes find success comes our way. Discovery is something that happens unexpectedly, not one of us realized we needed a home computer or the devices created in the last decade but we now know that we are happy to have the technology of the iPhone, iPod, and iPad. My belief is that there will always be innovators in the wings ready to bring us new technology. They are the ones like Steve Jobs who will continue to help the world fearlessly move forward into the future.
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PaisleyPerspective 