Posted on 10/19/2011 7:45:21 AM PDT by bigbob
The blogosphere has been rife with remembrances of Steve Jobs over the last couple of weeks. I don’t have anything bad to say about him, but now that some time has passed, I’m just going to say it: I think the hoopla over him is over the top.
A few things to consider:
1. People write about Steve to write about themselves.
2. Individuals do not make history. Populations do.
3. You can tell a lot about a society by the people they honor.
4. Steve Jobs sheds more light on the nature vs. nurture debate than he does on the history debate.
5. Espousing the glories of genius gets us nowhere.
(Excerpt) Read more at bnet.com ...
Especially point #4: "Something absolutely fascinating to me about Steve is that Mona Simpson is his biological sister. If you don’t know who Mona Simpson is, take a look at the book “Anywhere But Here.” She is Steve Jobs’ sister and the book is just one of her wildly acclaimed novels. They have the same parents, but Steve was given up as an infant for adoption. And Mona was raised by her mom."
Follow the link for more on this aspect of his life which was news to me. Nature vs. Nurture.
I’ll save the hit attacks for when Gates passes from this world into internal fire, damnation, blue screens of death, and incessent worms,viruses, and malbots.
Jobs = intellect.
Gates = sleezebag.
I was a serious PC hobbyist. I work in IT.
I never expected Apple to come back. I hated their locked down systems, and their high prices.
Apple almost went away without Jobs. Jobs also did quite well with Pixar. Not so much with NeXT, but, to quote the Meatloaf song, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad! (Did I really just quote Meatloaf? Ugh.)
Jobs was a genius. Jobs had an impact on the world, and I don’t mind people going over the top in their rememberances. The man passed, they’re sad, and it makes them and his fans feel better.
I wasn’t a fan, but I tip my cap to his genius, and achievements.
NeXT is the basis of the OSX operating system and iOS to a futher extent. I would say he did QUITE well with NeXT.
>2. Individuals do not make history. Populations do.
This moronically puerile line is plenty enough that I won’t waste my time reading the rest. Individuals DO make history. Individuals do most everything of note. About the only noteworthy things crowds do is riot.
“Jobs = intellect.
Gates = sleezebag.”
Really?
If Gates is a sleazebag, he’s a very well rewarded sleazebag. Sometimes those who love technology lose sight of what technology businesses are... BUSINESSES.
If you bought Microsoft stock in 1992, you’d LOVE Bill Gates. Bill Gates isn’t worried about advancing technology, but he is a genius.
Nature creates the POSSIBILITY for genius or creativity.That alone shows that some people simply have `it` and others don`t, no matter how much they may desire that.
“I would say he did QUITE well with NeXT.”
Not so much if you were a partner in NeXT.
This whole article makes me feel stupid for having read it. How did the author both manage to say “it’s more important to raise your kids than to be a top CEO” and also “Steve Jobs proves that nature is more important than nurture” in the same piece?
And the “great man theory of history” may be passe to historians but I’m pretty sure most of the rest of us still take it seriously.
Great article. It reminds me of the grade school mentality that most people have regarding Henry Ford - that he invented the automobile. What he did was apply the concept of the assembly line, which already existed, to the manufacture of cars, which already existed. And he applied it to a design that was inexpensive enough to enable the sale of the high volumes the assembly line produced.
If he didn’t do it, someone else would have. It is amazing what competition motivates people to do.
—Did I really just quote Meatloaf?—
“So now I’m prayin’ for the end of time, to hurry up and arrive. ‘Cause if I have to spend another minute with you, I don’t think I can survive”.
I hate to admit that that song STILL cracks me up.
Individuals do matter greatly. Grant was the general Lincoln has been looking for forever. Without Churchill at the helm, Britain would have made peace with Hitler. Only Einstein could have persuaded FDR to build the bomb. Good knows we need heroes, and while every man is a product of his times, without heroes to lead us, we perish.
“...If you bought Microsoft stock in 1992, you’d LOVE Bill Gates. Bill Gates isn’t worried about advancing technology, but he is a genius...”
Gasp, and had I purchased GM stock years ago, I’d also have been rich...until the biz idiots there made GM the mechanical equivalent of Microsoft.
Einstein said that the mark of stupidity was to do the same thing repeatedly and expect different results.
Tried Windows lately? Windows, yesterday’s technology today.
I’ll say no more on this, but rest assured that there is nothing in any Microsoft product that even approaches state of the art.
Period.
” Bill Gates isn’t worried about advancing technology”
You obviously don’t know Bill.
When he learned of his liver cancer.
He called the top Estate Attorneys to transfer his wealth to Trust to protect his wealth for his family.
God bless him for that because unlike Buffett and other liars.
—How did the author both manage to say “it’s more important to raise your kids than to be a top CEO” and also “Steve Jobs proves that nature is more important than nurture” in the same piece?—
I understand it. The two comments are not related, though they appear to be at first glance.
It’s like saying rasing kids is more important than having a photographic memory, but Jobs, as did his sister, had a photographic memory. It was not nurture that gave it to him. It was nature.
YES...I noted that also....little commie indoctrination.
One does not have to ascribed to the Great Man theory of history to know that individuals do matter. Yogi Berra is said to have said, when you come to a fork in the road, take it. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, but do all roads end up in the same place? Would McClellan have been a better choice in 1864 than Lincoln? We will never know. But likely things would not have been the same.
—How did the author both manage to say “it’s more important to raise your kids than to be a top CEO” and also “Steve Jobs proves that nature is more important than nurture” in the same piece?—
Oops. I forgot the most important part: Nurture is important because it can give a “Jobs” type person important values upon which the virtues given by nature can be applied.
So the correct phase would not be Bush = Hitler, but Bush = German?
What a crock of BS. Most people are sheep and need individual leaders.
And before you reply to tell me I'm wrong, do you think that the USA's problems today are not caused by Obama, but the fault of all the population of the USA, including YOU!
I’m kinda that way too. Had an interaction after one West Coast Computer Faire (if you remember those!) with Jobs where he was rude and arrogant, but when I found I could buy an Apple II with a PROM burner cheaper than a Data IO, I found myself admiring their open architecture concept. Something they later abandoned, but USB and new technologies provided the same function. Of course Wozniak was also a big factor in those early days.
“Nature creates the POSSIBILITY for genius or creativity.That alone shows that some people simply have `it` and others don`t, no matter how much they may desire that.”
I don’t understand why it has to be one over the other. It’s obvious to the casual observer, me, that it’s both.
If you have a kid with bad DNA, all the nurture in the world won’t fix that kid. Whether it be lack of intelligence, or just damaged reasoning, (a bad kid, yes, there is such a thing as a bad kid). Nurture can mitigate it, but not fix it.
I agree that a single man can change history, but then we all do. And the greater the mob behind them, the greater the change. Hitler is a good example. And I do believe that had we not had Hitler, we may have had a war with the USSR around that time. That’s the problem with the “what if C=McClellan had been elected” question. Whatever happened, he would have been the “great man” that led whatever happened, e.g. allowed the seccession of the south.
And then during WWI we may have had an American front, where the north supported Germany and the South supported th brits/french. We don’t know. But without the conditions under which the “great man” got his support, he would not have been “great”. Europe was RIPE for a Hitler. The automotive industry was RIPE for a Ford. The computer tech industry was RIPE for a Jobs. Without that ripeness, we would not have heard of any of those men. Hitler’s art was atrocious.
Kevin M. Ritchie, the computer genius who co-wrote Unix and who wrote the C language also died.
He really was the inventive genius that marketing geniuses Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have pretended to be.
—And before you reply to tell me I’m wrong, do you think that the USA’s problems today are not caused by Obama, but the fault of all the population of the USA, including YOU!—
For the most part, yes. I believe, and have said for two decades now, that in a democracy you do not only get the government you want. You get the government you deserve. The electorate is the problem. How else would we get an Obama.
And have you ever voted your wallet? Then some of the responsibility lies squarely on your shoulders.
Voter fraud.
“You obviously don’t know Bill.”
But I know Jack!
Gates #1 goal was to make money, as it should have been. I don’t have a problem with that. But, lots of wonks want Microsoft to be like Linux. Leading edge, quirky, but innovative, and fun.
You go by what they do, not what they say. Windows NT server? Really? Server support for crappy old 16bit apps until Windows 7 64 bit. Same base kernel since NT? I use Windows 7. I like it. But for fun I play with Ubuntu. Amazing what a bunch of motivated people can do on their own.
I’m not here to bash Gates, or Microsoft. They fill a need. But, they are not worried about cutting edge. They are followers. They see trends, and try to copy and make money, or just buy the company in question!
—Voter fraud.—
I see that risk, but voter fraud only works if the race is relatively close. Obama should not have had the remotest chance of getting any but the most radical of voters to choose him. But a lot of people voted for him.
Whatever your experience was/is with Bill Gates ... it effected you negatively.
Christians are asked by Jesus to pray for our enemies, and to be forgiving as we have been forgiven.
The spirit of God lives in believers..
A good way to stat the day is to remember this truth.
Sound like an individual making history to me.
Who is talking about his partners?
—Sound like an individual making history to me.—
And so did Jobs. But it misses the author’s point, with which I happen to agree.
Bill is a technogeek.His whole schtick back in the 70’s was to get on the cover of Fortune Magazine and beat IBM at its own game. In many ways Bill gave us the tech industry as we know it.
Microsoft products have always been braod in that, un like Apple, they didn’t control the hardware so their products had to suffer on whatever hardware was out there. Apple could easily, and they did, sunset products on platforms. Microsoft had to make their products work on newer hardware with much of the hardware incompatible with other hardware. Not fun.
They are worried about cutting edge. The problem is that peope think something like an iPhone is cutting edge when it simply contains the hardware already avaialble and brain dead software that doesn’t do much.
Microsoft created many things, improved manyothers, and offers products most people don’t even know exists. Did you know they have over 500 products available in over 200 languages? Does Apple? Did you know Microsoft products work on millions of combinations of hardware? Apple definately doesn’t.
Heard of Hackint0sh?
Well, maybe someone else might have done what Einstein did, but while the mathematical developments of the 19th Century, and the Michelson-Morly Experiment might have been necessary for his theory, they were not sufficient. I think that there needs to someone who can make that leap. Why Darwin and not Wallace? Because Wallace was a social nobody and Darwin was a “somebody.” My brother-in-law devised a star map for the astronauts, and Buzz Aldin, who gave some input, took the credit. A man must have the chance, must be in a position to act greatly before he can become great. Anatole France had a short story of what life would have been like in France if the Revolution had been avoided. Old Captain Bonaparte would shared his stories with the village children of life in a French Army where command was limited to the high nobility.
Respectfully, this article is little more than someone spewing why their “genius” hasn’t been recognized by the world like Jobs’ was...
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