Swipe, Swipe, Touch: RIP, Steve Jobs

News of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ passing has been front and center of the news flow since last night. There’s plenty that can be said—and is being said—about the man, but I especially like Hank Stuever’s piece for the Washington Post, a eulogy that leaves out widely-known biographical detail and instead embeds itself in rich social and historical context. I’ve tried to paste just enough here to distill the message without skirting content laws. It’s a beautiful piece, and highly recommended:

People built their lives around the objects Steve Jobs gave them…What happened with Jobs and Apple over the past decade is one of the rare participatory phenomena of our disconnected and no-longer-common culture. It was as if this generation’s defining event took place in a shopping plaza and then up in the “cloud,” and this time everyone (that is, everyone who could afford Apple products) got to go to Woodstock. 

People stopped lining up for concert tickets and started lining up for new phones. This was the future right in front of you. It was sleek, responding to your touch. Imagine explaining an iPad to someone from 1984. They might get it, they might not.

Swipe, swipe, touch…

That is what Steve Jobs gave us: the future…He gave us a look at the future and all the ambivalence and worry that comes with it. It was the most elegant form of social disruption, and now your kids won’t glance up from their iPhones…

We spend a lot of time wishing for the past…That in itself is a pleasant form of grief, but it is grief all the same.

Jobs kept nudging us away from that. Under his leadership, Apple’s subliminal selling point was: Let it go. Let go of the uneasiness about computers…But let go of something deeper, something resistant in you that romanticizes the past.

In 2011…[it] feels as though we’re losing grip on the old, beloved things…

Jobs had been teaching us to say goodbye…for decades — we just didn’t know it…

It was therefore an irresistible metaphor, in these final years, when the auditorium lights would go down and the crowd would go wild for Jobs, who increasingly greeted his followers and touted the latest neat, new thing even as he wore the look of a person who was not going into that future with us. He would be getting off here; we were to proceed without him into the unknown. Let it go and look ahead was the message all along.

Speaking of letting go, the iconic wireless glasses, jeans, and black mock turtleneck were a relatively recent upgrade:

http://www.everythingicafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-Shot-2011-10-05-at-7.45.26-PM.png 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sigalakos/839742222/

http://theshiva.me/web/wp-content/uploads/2010-mar-05-steve_wozniak_steve_jobs-old-photo.jpg

http://www.businessinsider.com/ceosfirstjobs/steve-jobs

http://www.instablogsimages.com/images/2009/06/30/steve-jobs-apple-41171_463_800_XtCNw_19672.jpg

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