Look, it's a very sad day when someone dies too young, and Steve Jobs was too young.
But...
Steve Jobs was very good at innovative marketing. He took things that already existed and made them cooler. Before there was an iPhone, there were Blackberries. Before there was a Mac, there were computers. Jobs was great at style. He owned the cool factor.
But...
The reaction to his death says something sinister to me. We are treating this like we would a head of state or a religious figure. Ralph Shuttlesworth died yesterday. He helped free African Americans from second class citizenship. Steve Jobs made your phone cool.
I don't know why we need to rend our clothes and wear ashes and sackcloth. I read something about how Jobs democratized technology. I don't know. I never owned a Mac after college. I have an iPhone and it's great. I don't "get" the iPad, but maybe because my Most Wonderful and Desirable Wife and Thing One and Thing Two monopolize the damned thing.
Yeah, I like being able to check game scores from wherever I am. But I like Doritos, too, and we didn't stop the presses when the guy who invented them died last week.
To me this is an example of the fetish of the cool and the church of the material. We are so obsessed with our stuff that we lionize the guy who repackaged the clunky into the sleek.
I think Jobs was great at what he did. He was a pioneer and a trend setter.
But there are bigger things in life than being cool.
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