

Why We’ll Never Stop Talking About Steve Jobs - napolux
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/10/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-steve-jobs/

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corporalagumbo
Jobs' death was really amazingly well-timed. He died just at the moment when
the open communication culture he helped build was taking off. So his death
(and in particular the response) reflects his life's work most remarkably. For
the first time in history, the death of a "great man" became almost instantly
the subject of debate and analysis, conducted in thousands and thousands of
blog posts, hundreds of thousands of comments, tweets and Facebook posts. The
debate quickly became recursive - articles about "Why Steve Jobs was great"
generate articles about "Why we talk about Steve Jobs" which in turn generates
response (such as this), "Why we talk about talking about Steve Jobs." And so
on. Only a year later and people are fervently discussing his legacy - having
arguments in real time yet saturated with self-consciousness of history. And
such discussion in itself changes the object being discussed.

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lutusp
> Why We’ll Never Stop Talking About Steve Jobs ...

And I though that had already happened.

> Jobs has joined the pantheon of greats who advanced science and industry and
> society itself ...

Maybe we should let history decide this, over a much longer time than has
passed since Steve's departure. It's already clear that he can't be compared
to Edison or Tesla, both of whom invented technology, where Steve promoted
technology invented by others, including me.

Steve might eventually be compared to Ford, but that's the only one of the
three to whom he is compared that actually makes sense.

~~~
corporalagumbo
With all due respect to your contribution to current technology, I think Jobs
can and probably should be compared to Edison or Tesla, not because he did the
same kind of work (he didn't) but because he illustrates the shift in the
quality of important achievements between T/E's era and ours, and performed an
equivalent role in helping bring about the core developments of our time. In
Tesla and Edison's case, these core developments involved the application of
novel principles and the development of radical new core technologies. In
Jobs' case, this involved tying together all the strands of post-WWII
technologial innovation into one streamlined package, creating an aura or
mystique, and dragging the mainstream of society online. Once people like
Tesla and Edison fill out the core innovations at a certain level of
technology, the important next step becomes working out what to do with those
innovations at a higher level of abstraction. Jobs' was active several steps
up the abstraction ladder.

An important part of what he did was simply accessibility or marketability.
Forgive me if this sounds like I am diminishing the role of relatively pure
technical work and innovation (work which Jobs certainly made the most of and
largely did not contribute to directly from my understanding) but making
technology attractive and accessible was a very important step during this
period. Jobs' work may not have the romance of Tesla or Edison, but from what
I've read it sounds like he was an exceptional (if very lucky) individual who
combined a certain vision (of course continuously evolving) with a certain
aggressive determination to realise that vision (catalysed by the incredible
opportunities he was given in life). He was a different man, not better or
worse (though maybe less romantic) to suit a different time.

