In Memoriam: Steve Jobs (1955-2011)
Steve Jobs who passed away two days ago at the age of 56 was perhaps the greatest creative personality the world will ever know. He was a visionary CEO who thought like an artist. He forever changed the world we live in. There have of course been others before him: Freud, Einstein, Oppenheimer, Henry Ford come to mind foremost, but the knowledge or products they have given us have at best been ambiguously beneficial to mankind. Jobs managed to give us unambiguous happiness. We never knew that we wanted the products he conceived but once he gave them to us they not only became indispensable to our lives, but they made us happy.
This may be the single most important contribution Jobs has made to mankind. Spinoza, the seventeenth-century Jesuit philosopher once wrote that “all happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.”
As neuroscience has recently confirmed, we love our iPhones, literally.
Steve Jobs will be remembered for many reasons, most of which begin with a lowercase “i,” but he will forever be loved for giving us happiness.
Apple Store, Columbus Avenue, New York City, October 7, 2011. Photo: Klaus Ottmann
Apple Store, Regent Street, London, October 9, 2011. Photo: Klaus Ottmann
The Experiment Station 
“As neruoscience has recently confirmed…”. the reference here to the NYT’s article has been debunked. To think that the wizardry of Jobs gives happiness through the wonderful machines he created–and wonderful they are–is to mistake pleasure for happiness. Happiness abides not as a condition of exterior objects; it reflects an interior manifestation of oneself abiding in a sense of self beyond conditions. It is easy to mistakenly think our “stuff” makes us happy.
Jobs was an extraordinary man, and, as The Singer who Sang His Songs once lamented, “done too soon.” Many thanks for the photographs.