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.
> 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.
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.
