Foreword: I wrote this down quickly, without re-reading it, if there will be some follow-up I’ll have time to correct formal or conceptual mistakes, if any. Thanks for your patience.
Well, this is not a rant but it won’t even be an elegy to what seems to have been the greatest man in IT industry.
I feel the need to write something more than a tweet since I don’t want (!) that what I write could be taken as sarcasm or somehow disrespectful towards the man himself. I won’t be polite and won’t keep my thoughts hidden to maintain bourgeois respectability. I won’t have mince words, since I think hypocrisy or conformism are way much disrespectful to a man who left such a big mark, is it bad or good. Hope my point is clear enough.
5 October 2011 Steve Jobs dies. As always infotainment machine starts its eulogy: american TVs stopped their usual broadcasting at the same time to give the news. Reporters ran to their keyboards to write tons of words and both fanboys and serious professionals all around the world took the tam-tam on socials.
This remember me what happened recently with Amy Winehouse’s depart (to a lesser extent, of course). She was an average/good vocalist, OK. She drunk herself to death, also. But media was too taken depicting her as the greatest vocalist of all times (and all genres, and all genders, and such) to remember that she was, after all, a poor junkie.
But Jobs and Amy Winehouse was two different levels. Seriously. So celebrate Jobs for what he did makes way more sense. I mean, this time he deserves such a praise!
Or not?
Well, I know I’m asking for being stoned to death, but I can’t agree with the general mood. Not at a full extent.
5 October 2011 one of my (yes, my) worst enemies lives on. Jobs (the man) died, Jobs (the myth) ate his corpse and grew stronger than ever.
Everywhere I turn my gaze I could read sappy words on what he did for the world, on the example he gave, and such.
Well, what seems to me is that Jobs did pretty nothing for anyone but himself. As we all do, by the way. It was a month or so that I was planning to comment on this post about unusual personal Steve Jobs facts. This could not be the fairest of the moment but that is.
Can you see my enemy? It is there, in that post. It is there from the very first sentence:
“I was standing right next to Steve Jobs in 1989 and it was the closest thing I ever felt to being gay.”
OK, anybody is free to feel as she see fit. But along the post you could read what seems to me a brainless celebration of something that’s no more a man.
How many times I read vitriol and insults against Microsoft’s unfair competition? Uff… I can’t count them. When the DR-DOS/Win 3.1 affair came to my knowledge I hit the roof! How could a company gain its dominance position in such a way?
Well, tell me how could I praise someone that fucked his partner (read on the Atari affair in the post above) as a successful man?
How could I see it as an inspiration when he dropped a child to pursue his personal goals?
Could I call “visionary” someone that made use of LSD? (well, yes. But it’s also doping in some cultures)
So, let’s see things as they are: Jobs didn’t nothing for the world. As me, as you, as anybody on the fucking planet, he did what he did for himself. What he ended up was a bunch of high quality technology that delights you as hell. That’s good, of course. But don’t fool yourself thinking you really was in his mind. He didn’t gave a dime about you. Maybe he didn’t gave a dime about Apple too. He was not a savior, it was a wonderful entrepreneur, one able to build a myth behind which he could do what I liked most without worry about consequences.
And what about inspiration? If on a side everybody should learn from him how to pursue excellence in everything (the good part), there is another part that should be taken into account. Imagine…
Imagine being a father, watching your daughter dating with a charming but upstart guy. Imagine discover her pregnant and seeing him flee. Would this be of inspiration for (say) your son?
Imagine being a geek. You’re not to good in talking with people, so you spend nights after nights on a project while your mate, your friend, take contacts with the customer. Imagine being fooled and robbed by him. Would you take inspiration by him so you’ll be the next to wise up at the expense of someone else?
Imagine being a charity and see one the wealthier company in the world cuts donation to you. Actually everybody do what she wants with her own money, of course. But in that role, would you promote that company example everywhere? Would it be of inspiration for your cause?
In the end, it could seem all I wrote is sort of attack to gone Jobs. But it isn’t! I trust in freedom and I really think each of us should live as she see fit. Everybody!
This is an attack to you! Maybe. If you are praising Jobs as a myth, your are feeding the monster with the remains of a free man, someone that was behind the myth and that deserves respect and honor. He wasn’t made by you, nor for you. See him for what he was, not for what you need to stick to it. Praise his success and condemn his mistakes, so that you could really make a treasure of what he did.
RIP Mr. Jobs.
PS: seeing Google’s tribute link to Steve Jobs pointing to Apple’s site explains a lot on how Jobs is perceived by the world. It makes me a little sick.
-
arantaweek posted this
