| Steve Jobs: So long, and thanks for all the bicycles |
[Oct. 5th, 2011|10:55 pm] |
 "Bicycles for the mind" was a phrase Steve Jobs used often in the early days of the Macintosh. The human body is not a very efficient machine. Horses, dogs, even giraffes use energy much more effectively to move around, leaving people somewhere down near the three-toed sloth. But put a human on a bicycle, and he shoots to the top of the list.
That was how he saw technology. Those of us who are old enough will remember all the buzz about "home computers" in the early '80s; the usual question was, "what would I do with one?" and the usual answer, "manage accounts and organize recipes." Even the folks who were most enthusiastic about computers still saw them merely as machines to calculate and collate.
Jobs was the first person to look at computers as a means to do things that we already wanted to do and things that we didn't know we wanted to do, and bring that to fruition. A bicycle for the mind. Twenty years ago, who looked at a computer and saw a video editing rig? A recording studio? A movie theater? A movie studio?
The remarkable thing about Steve Jobs, unique among technology pioneers of the time, wasn't just that he had a clear and compelling vision; it was remarkable that he had one at all. His rival, Bill Gates, made his goal "a computer on every desk," but didn't seem to know why.
In the products he brought to market, at Apple, NeXT and Pixar, Steve Jobs saw the engineer's pursuit of efficiency and the artist's passion for elegance as essentially the same thing. Under his leadership, the goal of Apple's products was in itself elegantly efficient: "It just works."
This is not to paint him in beatific terms, as some sort of high-tech Bodhisattva. He was, by the accounts of many who worked with him, kind of an asshole. That is the price of having a clear vision and dragging others along.
The fruits of that vision are far, far greater than Apple, impressive as that would be all by itself. Look at desktop computers before the Macintosh and after. At music players before the iPod and after. Music sales before iTunes and after. Smartphones before the iPhone and after. Tablet computers before the iPad and after.
In all of those technologies, Apple wasn't the first player in the game, but Apple drew a sharp line where everything changed. No one since Henry Ford has changed his industry more profoundly and enriched more lives than Steve Jobs, and whether you have a Mac, Windows or Linux on your desk, an iPod or a Sanza hooked to those earbuds, an iPhone or an Android in your pocket, you're carrying a bit of his legacy. Not too shabby. |
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| Comments: |
Nice piece.
Also, your panda looks like he wants to eat Steve's brains. Who can blame him. | |
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