What a day! First folk guitar legend Bert Jansch and now comes news of a much bigger loss in terms of popular cultural impact, the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs. Despite his having resigned as Apple’s CEO a few months ago due to lingering and serious health issues, tonight’s news still seems shocking – for its rapidity, if not its unexpectedness. (A year from now this news wouldn’t seem so surprising, I think, as it does now.)
Personality aside, Jobs was undeniably a creative and marketing genius whose visionary work has affected the daily lives of so many of us for more than two decades. Literally everyone in the Western World has been touched in some way by the results of his inspired ideas and high standards. Not just the early Mac adopters among us, and not just every iPod-, iPhone-, iPad-touting biz person, hipster or kid even. But anyone who has ever enjoyed iTunes, been able to be more productive and creative with the help of an easy-to-use personal computer at work or home thanks to the user-friendly graphic interface, or even just been exposed to the far-reaching design sensibilities that trickled out of Cupertino, Calif., into so many products and aspects of our contemporary culture.
Let’s hope that Apple can honor Steve by living up to his legacy in the years to come.
This video clip of Jobs’ commencement address at Stanford University in 2005 is one of the more oft-referenced graduation speeches of recent years, thanks in no-small part to 6 million and counting views on YouTube. It’s worth watching if you haven’t seen it, or again, even if you have.
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