Death
is a good thing not merely because, as Mr. Jobs put it, “It’s probably the
single best invention of life,” or “it’s life’s change agent,” but also because
men of hubris are at last brought down to Earth (and indeed below the Earth) by
the phenomenon of death. It’s a fate that no hubristic billionaire can escape …
yet.
The
ordinary person can look at a hubris-laden individual engaged in some
megalomaniacal activity and take some satisfaction out of this knowledge that
death will conquer this villain as well just as it has claimed many other
villains through history.
What
other areas of human activity can you think of where there’s virtual equality
between all? Some path breaking inventions of medical science qualify. When a
vaccine is available for polio, EVERYONE is suddenly safe from this scourge —
street dwellers and penthouse dwellers.
But
they are few and far between. Technology seems to be one arena where this
occurs more frequently. Consumer devices are at once cutting edge and common
place.
Sure,
the rich can afford to buy a personal supercomputer and we can’t. But that is
not the point. Supercomputers don’t come pre-loaded with countless freely
downloadable cool apps. Nor perhaps can you conveniently carry a supercomputer
around in the tiny pockets of your tight jeans.
Hence:
the unparalleled genius of Mr. Jobs of Apple. Perhaps he understood this. That
if you create great products and make extraordinary claims about those
products, people will be converts. He was willing to go beyond most others in
making himself synonymous with Apple products.
He
was in essence the sole brand ambassador for Apple. There was risk involved in
this strategy. He would have become the laughing stock of the entire nerd
universe if his claims about the superiority of Apple products did not pass
muster with consumers.
And
above all there’s fundamentally this refreshing authenticity when Steve is
promoting the latest Mac, iPod, iPhone, or iPad. It’s the latest that Steve
himself is using. There’s no assumed, built in, duplicity involved. Imagine how
unlike the usual norms of marketing that is!
When
preternaturally thin models or heavenly beauties promote various products on
TV, there’s this essential lying involved which goes like this: you KNOW as
well as I do that no matter how much anti-wrinkle stuff you’re going to apply
or how much you’re going to starve yourself, you ain’t going to become me. You
KNOW that! And yet, I will PRETEND that you can get as good looking as me or as
slim as me by using this or that product.
Who
believes for an instant that some shoe promoted by some superstar is going to
convert everyman into an equally talented sportsperson? Yet we choose to be
influenced — otherwise there won’t have been multi-millionaire sportspersons.
With
cutting edge technologies such as space travel, we may choose to be
passionately devoted to the exploits of NASA and get whatever vicarious sense
of achievement we may by being witness to the heroic exploits of astronauts who
stand on the shoulders of thousands of technologists. But clearly we all can’t
yet be space travelers.
With
deep scientific research, we may choose to marvel at the capacity of the human
mind to drill so deeply into the bedrock of the fundamental nature of nature.
If we are so inclined, we get what joy we can from the mysteries and wonders of
quantum mechanics. We may choose to be humbled if we have the slightest
realization about the immensity of the astronomical universe (Carl Sagan told
us about how astronomy was an humbling science) or simply get a tingle in our
spine just looking at the Milky Way at night standing out on an open field
somewhere far away from city lights.
We
do not need to be actually working on the Hubble imaging team or the Cassini
imaging team or be part of the great Voyager project. We do not have to be
Penzias and Wilson to acquire the realization today that we are able to hear
the leftover noise from the very creation event itself that started it all.
We
are indeed lucky to have had such giants walk among us: giants such as Einstein
who understood the deep connections between space and time and between mass and
energy. Other giants such as Bohr and Feynman and the other quantum pioneers
and Weinberg and Chandrasekhar and others of the community of physicists and
astrophysicists have enabled us ALL — if we choose to see and learn — to have
such a deep understanding about the cosmos. The human brain has perceived and
deciphered the quantum nature of phenomena at the sub-atomic level. We have
learnt to calculate in precise mathematical detail the evolution of stars with
varying masses and compositions. And we understand stellar nucleosynthesis —
how all those elements in the periodic table are made inside stellar fusion
furnaces.
What
a beautiful mind our species is possessed of!
We
are explorers all. Some are more talented … or perhaps more persevering or just
plain lucky. But all of us wish to touch that envelope, the boundary between
what is possible and what is not. We wish to experience it ourselves as the
once impossible is brought squarely into the fold of the possible.
It
happens in high energy particle physics experiments when each new accelerator experiment
explores a hitherto unexplored region of energetic interactions among subatomic
particles travelling at close to the speed of light.
Each
new space telescope enables us to peer ever deeper into the universe using yet
another part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Radio telescopes on the ground
are designed with ever increasing complexity and sophistication to enable ever
higher resolution views of the distant galaxies and other objects at the very
edges of the visible universe.
While
all these fascinating endeavors endure, most of us can only be vicarious
participants in them. Consumer technology seems to be the only arena of high
technology where the very latest is instantly accessible to vast numbers of
people (at least in the advanced/wealthy countries of the world).
It
was perhaps Mr. Jobs’ unique achievement that he was able to understand this
innate human desire to be able to directly participate in cutting edge
technology. Apple’s products embedded the latest technology and presented an
interface to the user that was not only not intimidating but indeed immensely
inviting. And Mr. Jobs marketed those products himself thus making certain
extraordinary claims and promises. The public touched the technology frontier
and liked what it saw.