Home > Critic-At-Large > History Lessons for Modern Times
History Lessons for Modern Times
By Chris Colcord
Fort Wayne Reader
A good friend of mine who works at Apple recently attended the on-campus memorial for Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder and guiding force, and other than the performances from Coldplay and Norah Jones and a tribute from Al Gore, he thought it was similar to other services that he'd been to in Fort Wayne. Virtually everybody at the Silicon Valley complex attended the service, with standing-room only crowds filling the outdoor amphitheatre in the heart of the company's campus. My friend explained that the mood at Apple had been understandably darkened by the loss of the company's visionary leader, but the service did much to lessen the sadness surrounding the loss of such a vital presence.
In the weeks following Jobs' death, it's been fascinating to observe social critics and business experts as they try to put the man's life into some kind of historical perspective. Almost immediately, comparisons were made to both Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, two other visionaries whose achievements created a lasting influence on the lives of millions of people. Masayoshi Son, chief executive of Softbank Corporation, the sole carrier of the iPhone in Japan, went even further: "Steve was truly a genius of our time with a rare ability to fuse art and technology, Son said in a statement. In centuries from now, he will be remembered alongside Leonardo da Vinci. His achievements will continue to shine forever."
While I have no desire to diminish in any way the accomplishments of Steve Jobs, I think it's wholly appropriate to respond to the esteemed Japanese CEO thusly: hold on a second there, Son. There are a few tiny differences here. Da Vinci is widely considered to be not only one of the greatest painters of all time, but probably the most astonishingly diverse and talented man to ever to breathe air on earth. He displayed virtuosity across an impossibly wide range of disciplines and sciences: architecture, anatomy, geology, sculpture, cartography, botany, mathematics, engineering, painting, writing the list is virtually endless. Jobs? Well, he made gadgets. Cool gadgets, to be sure, but to compare him to da Vinci is not only an incredibly inaccurate, modern overreaction, but something of an insult to those who appreciate the genius of the Italian renaissance man. To put it another way: da Vinci designed bridges, came up with the ideas for the helicopter, solar power, the tank, the calculator, he made discoveries in optics, hydrodynamics, anatomy, and oh, yes, he also painted the two most famous paintings in world history, "Mona Lisa" and "The Last Supper." By comparison, Jobs made the iPhone and the iPad. He belongs "alongside" da Vinci? I can't believe that Jobs himself would have done anything but scoff at the notion.
Well, okay, I guess I should remember that Masayoshi Son is a businessman and perhaps not the most gifted at making historically relevant analogies. But his words reflect a popular sentiment among many social critics today, namely, the "Tyranny of the Now." It's a philosophy that seems to believe that anything noteworthy that happens in our time is the greatest, most significant event ever, and all that other stuff you know, history simply doesn't matter. Therefore, Jobs is da Vinci, and Obama is George Washington and Bono is Elvis and Albert Pujols is Babe Ruth and who cares if the comparisons don't really add up? What matters is the now.
Nobody's asking me, of course, but if I was to try to put Steve Jobs into an appropriate context I'd lay off the da Vinci and Edison and Ford comparisons and focus more on the great designers who have had lasting influence on everyday things: Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles and Ray Eames, hell, even the designers at Whirlpool and Maytag and Jenn-Air or the genius who came up with the Lucky Strike "bull's eye" logo. Jobs was an innovator, to be sure, but he was fundamentally a designer, a man who had a refined sense of simplicity and elegance that attached 