Steve Jobs’ legacy - One of the great men of our time

STEVE JOBS, the great, if not the greatest, American hero of the age has died.

President Barack Obama became a hero of sorts because he overcame history’s burdens but Steve Jobs is a modern hero because he did so much to imagine and to facilitate the future.

Where others communicated with us he helped us communicate with each other in ways that revolutionised person-to-person and citizen-to-citizen interaction. He turned what was once a vertical process into something much more horizontal and egalitarian. Something with real consequences and something with real power.

It may be stretching it a bit far but not by much to suggest that President Obama reached the White House because he understood and used the mass communications systems created by Jobs and his peers better than any of his rivals. Not only was he America’s first black president, more importantly he was America’s first social media president. How effectively he reinvigorates that conversation may decide if his bid to become a two-term president is successful. Just as the success of the Arab Spring depended on social media networks so too does securing the most powerful office in the western world.

Yesterday President Obama was among many who paid tribute to the man he described as a visionary and great American innovator. “The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.”

Not only did Jobs reshape the topography of news delivery he reshaped computing, telecommunications and the creation and delivery of music and film.

He was the imaginative force behind Apple, makers of the Macintosh computer, the iMac, the iPod, iPhone and iPad, and the man behind the wonderful success of computer animation firm Pixar. He did more to influence which films we watch, how we listen to music, and how we work and play than any person alive today. As if that was not enough, he did it in an inspiring and humane way, always celebrating the individual and that person’s dreams and aspirations.

He, a Buddhist college drop-out, encouraged others to follow their dreams and to belive that passion can change the world. One of his constant themes was encouraging the broadest possible education even for technocrats.

His speech six years ago at Stanford University has become an anthem of empowerment and independence. It is a kind of secular Gettysburg Address, celebrating all that is good about human optimism and robustness. When he made it he had been diagnosed with the illness that killed him this week but he looked the challenge in the eye describing death as a great agent for change. That speech was aimed at one class of college graduates but the simplicity of the message, the clarity of the optimism and its undeniable force make it very relevant to all of us today.

Steve Jobs’ technical, business and cultural legacy are truly inspiring. His enriching, emotional leadership and commitment to the best in humanity make it almost unsurpassable.