When I logged on this Vijayadashami morning, the apple.com home screen announced the demise. My next stop was facebook. Several friends had already pasted the piercing black and white picture on their homepage. Twitter had thousands of tributes; President Obama’s and Bill Gates’s among them. The speech at Stanford had been delivered six years back, but its transcript remained a draw among trillions of words that compete for our attention on the web**. Just the first link on the youtube video stood at 4.3 million views.
It’s naïve therefore to try and describe a man who shook our world and then let death get the better of him at 56.
What more should one say for a man who Eric Schmidt already described as the best CEO in 50 years?
I guess it’s best to let Steve do some talking. And like he did, my cause will be served by keeping it short, without ever stating the obvious.
So, no straight jacketing him as the god of the iphone (or the ipad or the ipod). No summaries of his collision with John Sculley, the resultant ouster from the company he built, and the turnaround thereafter. No financial analysis of how emotion and technology coexist inside a financial godzilla nudging Exxon in market cap. Not even the very tempting recap of eating complimentary food at the Hare Krishna Temple that 'jeez-he-had-an-India-angle.’
The master had a more profound impact and that went beyond 0s and 1s, digital and/or financial.
The impact lay in liberating us from tyranny of customizing at the cost of snuffing the flame within; from killing ourselves trying to look good to others; from replacing God with the goddamned boss.
Steve helped us dream at a higher plane. He did that speaking of death, that final port of call:
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.”
“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. Your time is limited. So don’t waste it living someone else’s life. … Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”
The ''inner voice,’’ idea isn’t new. Just that Steve lived it, and how!
RIP, Mr Jobs. May your tribe increase!
May Schmidt have cause to replace you at the top.
Your end came within 6 weeks of hanging your boots. The Almighty never prolongs the agony of those who inspire. He gets them back, in your case, just to complete His own apple collection!
(The writer is a Contributing Editor with Governance Now. Email: [email protected]).