We tend to separate college life from “the real world,” but who says we collegiettes™ have to stay out of touch? In this blog, Her Campus Skidmore brings national and global news to the campus.
Yesterday, October 5, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple passed away. Jobs fought a long battle against pancreatic cancer, which lead to his resignation as Apple’s CEO on August 24, 2011 and his death, yesterday.
You may have heard the news while checking Facebook on your Mac, or getting a news alert on your iPhone. Apple has certainly pervaded our culture and thrust us into the new millennium in unpredictable ways. But as many have expressed since the news spread, we don’t just thank Steve Jobs for imagining iTunes, or creating the many generations of products we love, we thank him for being one of the greatest innovators of our time.
Steve Jobs wasn’t just a techy nerd, or a profit-driven businessman. Read any of the bios now released on any news outlet and you’ll learn that he was just a human set out to create the best things that people didn’t even know they wanted yet. He and his company did not measure success with market surveys but with their own zeal to design and build what had never existed before. He was his own barometer of success.
Jobs, as was previously mentioned, was at his core very human. His life story tells of several pitfalls and disappointments that lead to greater gains and achievements. He spent time in India learning meditation, he never finished college, and he was once fired from Apple and went on to create one of the leading animation studios, Pixar, which created childhood favorites like Toy Story and Finding Nemo (okay, maybe the latter was a junior high favorite for us!). His story is inspiring, let alone his products, ideas and innovations.
So we thank Steve Jobs for bringing to our generation a touch of humanity in an age so characterized by money and technology—for innovating, and not just imitating.
“The problem is I’m older now, I’m 40 years old, and this stuff doesn’t change the world. It really doesn’t. I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much — if at all. These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we might not otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to get in touch with other parents and support groups, get medical information, the latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life. I’m not downplaying that. But it’s a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light — that it’s going to change everything. Things don’t have to change the world to be important.” [Wired, February 1996]
Listen to Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford in 2005 for stories of his life, inspiration, and losses that led to incredible gains.
Sources and Further Reading:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/steve-jobs-apple-computer-co-founder-dies/2010/09/21/gIQAc14aOL_story.html
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/08/24/steve-jobss-best-quotes/
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/05/tech/innovation/steve-jobs-philosophy/
http://www.apple.com/