Steve Jobs' death

I guess this will be my first "serious" subject... and probably many people will hate what I am about to say... it's of course about today's most heard subject, namely Steve Jobs' death.


I never watch the news because I think that they are just a bunch of depressive stories about which you don't really care about... I also know that it is useless to watch the news as any piece of information worth knowing will be irrevocably unmissable on internet, no matter how casually you surf... and at least a couple of your facebook friend will update their status about said news...
Of course this was the case for Steve Jobs whose death I somehow learned about while reading an article on Johnny Depp.... talk about a connection...

Since then, it seems that I did not walk 2 steps without hearing about it... I turned on my TV, which is a very rare event for me, and watched BBC news go on for a few hours just about his death. Even at midnight, the late programs were speaking of it... It seems like all I've seen today is how the world is devastated by his death.... all these people putting up flowers and saying how much he changed their everyday life... ok... I really just can't buy that... it sounds ridiculous to me...
Because honestly, what do you care? Of course his family and people who knew him do, but the rest...  that is just something I cannot understand... does it mean that the guy who gave you your iphone is so important to you? Well of course he is... everyone knows that you can't survive without an iphone... I'm sorry, I mean noone can survive without an iphone 4, if you only have the 3 you already are outdated...
It just seemed to me that all this dramatic display was more the expression of "look I'm one of these cool Apple genius and I pretend to mourn for the death of a guy I don't even know" than a true "I really grieve and am deeply saddened". So yes, today it was the "cool" thing to do to pretend to be affected by Steve Jobs' death.

Anyway, so not only do we have to bare with the terrible, devastating news, but also with all the official statement from VIP... such as Mr Obama who seem to be very much more prompt at expressing his sadness about Steve Jobs than about the people living in misery in the US...

But whatever, these outburst of hypocritical love and grief, we're used to... but when I hear him compared to Thomas Edison or Leonardo da Vinci then I can't just stay put!!!

So let's go back to the FACTS:


Steve Jobs did NOT invent anything... he built a computer, a smaller version of what already existed! He was a great businessman and was a capitalist visionary. He knew what the masses would want and he knew how to design his products... He had the technology and he knew how to make it appeal to the people... so appealing in fact that despite the fact that everything from Apple is crazy expensive, people buy their stuff... it always cracks me up to see people complaining that they don't have enough money and yet have the latest iphone, ipad and imac.... I make a decent living, I have plenty of money to travel and enrich myself but I definitely don't have $1300 to waste on a mac... Hell, buy a PC for a third of that price, wipe it out, install Ubuntu and here you are... you have a mac...

So yes, he was a marketing genius... but he never invented the technology, he just made it accessible and user friendly... So how on earth can you compare this to Thomas Edison??? How can you compare a bunch of ipods to the discovery of the potential of electricity?? Sure, having computers is amazing and having individual computers is too... but again, Jobs just took the existing technology and made it smaller and better... in reality he just did what companies do everyday and there is nothing surprising about it... remember the first cell phones, the ones that weighted 1kg? Noone will ever care about who made them smaller but essentially that is exactly what Jobs did with computers... and yet, everyone idolizes him... that's what you call charisma!!

As for Thomas Edison, on the contrary, he is one, as well as many others, who invented devices at the time to use this newly found electricity... there had never been a light bulb before Edison, nor a phonograph (which is basically the old ancestor of the ipod by the way...)!
Edison found ways to provide electricity to everyone which was the pioneering stone to the modern era. Do you really think that the mac or the iphone is as useful to us as electricity? And that it impacted on everyone's life as much as having electricity?? I really doubt so...
As to comparing him to Leonardo da Vinci, well it's about the same thing as for Edison, it's just ridiculous... I won't even go into details because it is futile... I mean da Vinci, the guy who gave invaluable information about the human body, basis of medicine, the man who invented a flying machine 400 years before the first airplane, the man who left us the Mona Lisa?? COME ON!! ...


So finally, here is the simple truth, Steve Jobs is dead, and it is a shame because the guy had great ideas. But his fame is overrated. As much as he was an innovator he was not an inventor. He was only one of the first computer geeks. So many kids nowadays build their own computers in their garage, it's just that he did it 30 years before anyone else...
So yes the modern, developed and well fed world lost the man who provided them the most entertainment, but what about the rest of the world?
Isn't it a bit scary that it clearly started much more uproar than losing 5000 years old buddhas in Afghanistan a few years back or losing the 6 MILLIONS children who die from starvation every year... ?
Isn't it scary that in the end, what transpires is that the only fundamental question that the "modern" world has is: who will next provide my entertainment?
Panem et Circenses used to say Juvenal... things clearly have not changed...

Consumer society... Goodnight!