Steve Jobs as Artist

Although Thanksgiving is over, I’m still thankful and forgot to publish this post.

I’m a fan of Steve Jobs and a Mac user, like so many other people, but what was striking to me was that there appeared that something was missing in his bio tributes after his untimely and sad death — until I read this one by Steve Rosenbaum, for the Huffington Post. He attributes Steve Job’s brilliance to his creativity not so much his technological ability. In this, he was more of an artist than a techno geek. Here are excerpts below from the article.

The easy characterization of Jobs is as an inventor, the Albert Einstein​ of our time. But that’s not quite right. Jobs wasn’t a technologist, or even a scientist, though the result of his genius will impact both technology and science for decades to come.

Jobs was a sculptor, an artist. A difficult, driven, passionate artist who stood at the crossroads of technology and liberal arts….

As he explained to biographer Walter Isaacson:

“When I went to Pixar, I became aware of a great divide. Tech companies don’t understand creativity. They don’t appreciate intuitive thinking, like the ability for an A&R guy at a music label to listen to a hundred artists and have a feeling for which five might be successful. They think that creative people just sit around on couches all day and are undisciplined, because they’ve not seen how driven and disciplined the creative folks at places like Pixar are.”

“On the other hand, music companies are completely clueless about technology. They think they can just go out and hire a few tech folks, but that would be like Apple trying to hire people to produce music.”

“I’m one of the few people who understands how producing technology requires initiation and creativity, and how producing something artistic takes real discipline….The older I get, the more I see how much motivation matters.“…

“The reason Apple can create products like the iPad is that we’ve always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts.”

“In my perspective…science and computer science is a liberal art, it’s something everyone should know how to use, at least, and harness in their life. It’s not something that should be relegated to 5 percent of the population over in the corner. It’s something that everybody should be exposed to and everyone should have mastery of to some extent, and that’s how we viewed computation and these computation devices.”

What Jobs had was a love of the spirit and practice of creation, but not any of the conventional artistic outlets. Instead, he turned what had been simply tools into tools that were themselves object of beauty and art. The reason why creators love apple is because Apple created a bridge between art and science, and that is the bridge to the future.

I agree with the author and with Steve Jobs. Technology can be art and Art Is Everywhere. Thank goodness we have had wise people to guide us in this creative path and give us tools as he did to impact our daily lives — long after they are gone.

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!! — Let the holiday spirit begin…..

— Ashley

PS: On a coincidental note, I was encouraged to update my iPhone’s software during the Thanksgiving break while I was traveling. In doing so, my phone froze. It was my only access to the Internet as I was using it as a hotspot and we were conducting some major new Casart initiatives. I got the only appointment at the Apple store the Saturday before Thanksgiving. There were no parking spots in the gigantic mall parking lot. I had to wait for a lady with two kids but then luckily got another spot. The reason it was so crowded was because this was the first day of Santa at the mall. Huh, is this a New Orleans thing? What about Turkey Day? Fortunately my phone and all my apps were restored. I was wise enough to bring my laptop to get the “genious” to do this. Now everything is backed-up and stored on Apple’s iCloud so it can be restored remotely and from my phone next time. Fantastic, even though the technology failed me temporarily.

Meanwhile, we convinced my mother and business partner to get an iPhone. She’s still not sold on it but all her phone calls to me will be free (iPhone to iPhone with same carrier) but I just ordered her a huge pencil stylus so she doesn’t have to cut her fingernails to use the thing. I think she may like this retro feature. Click on this Houzz ideabook link to see other funny but functional retro fittings for your iPhone. Say that really fast 20 times!!