February 2012

On the (Struggle for) the Death of Steve Jobs

1. Temples in Our Minds

2. A Building on Its Side Becomes a Bridge

3. Speaking Without Meaning

4. Universe, Dented: A Postscript

5. NeXT?

1. Temples in Our Minds

The other night I was swiping through a pile of un-Instagram’d photos (don’t you hate how those pile up?) when I came upon a screenshot from one of my trips up north.

Yup, to meet with Apple.

On September 19th, 2011, I was here.

That was, what, a month or so? And now, well, our universe is a bit more dented. And I know it sounds ridiculous to say this, but at the time I’d wondered if he’d ever sat in the Lost Conference Room in the Valley Green Two Building on Valley Green Drive. I was late to the meeting and the only chair open was at the head of the table, and I even wondered as I sat down and caught my breath, if he’d ever sat in the very chair I was sitting in…

Much in the same way I suppose that people wonder through Papa’s Home or stare out in awe at Golgotha.

Certain types of people affect us in such a way that even the things they’d once touched, the places they’d once passed through — even the very idea of these things and places (a chair at the head of a conference room table) — become temples in our minds.

After the meeting, I took a van back to San Jose International and just as we passed by Apple’s main campus, I checked in on Foursquare.

Now, I don’t even like Foursquare (one day — I said it — that app is going to *explode* from Feature Bloat), but it seemed to be the only efficient way to memorialize or somehow encapsulate the experience. I mean, I’d just been to Apple! For an unapologetic fanboy whose only experience of His Mercurialness had been the annual buffering keynote streams out of Macworld, a drive-by check-in past 1 Infinite Loop was a big deal.

So I checked in at the same building that is now flying its flags at half-staff.

At the time, I actually believed that Naveen might’ve buried a reward somewhere inside the app: A badge of Apple’s icon, for example, with a second bite taken out of it. Perhaps I’d get a tip dropped in by a taunting Apple employee (“Make sure to pick up your free iPhone X at the company store!”). Maybe even the Man himself would make an appearance:

“Stop whatever you are doing and answer this question: What have you shipped today?”

All of those thoughts seem so trivial now, especially when compared to the multiple Twitter Trending Topics and tributes from Mr. President and movie rights scooped up (a bit too quickly) by Sony.

But isn’t it all still so insanely great? Trivial, yes — but *insanely great* nonetheless?

That a single man could hold such power over my mental space that I was bowled over by the mere idea, the pure hypothetical, that he might’ve stood in the very room I stood in, sat in the very chair I sat in?

Or that the company he’d built could stand as such a temple in my mind, as towering as any of the temples he himself built? So much so that I was convinced (I would’ve put money on it) that a geosocial startup had buried some knowing nod in that digital space surrounding Apple’s physical space?

Had there been an app upon my phone to beam out some form of digital worship (an ohm, an amen, a high-five), I swear, I would’ve tapped upon that glass.

Trivial and insanely great, indeed.

2.. A Building on Its Side Becomes a Bridge

When the temple in our minds grows so tall that it cannot be contained inside just one of us, it leaps to someone else — and then to another and another — growing in part in each of us, mind to mind.

A building on its side becomes a bridge.

And, as is our nature, we corrupt this act. We arrive at a point where his likeness (or should I say “His likeness”) has been splashed upon every World Wide Webpage, headlined with words like “icon,” “visionary,” “God.” So much so that we’ve enshrined him even inside his own logo until his mere silhouette — the very shadow cast by the icon of his face in portrait — has itself become its own icon…

—and we’re no longer talking about a human being, but instead an idea: Less Steve Jobs and more “Steve Jobs.”

And “the meaning” of his life-cum-death gets its meme on with SEO-rigged articles featuring his “Top Ten” this-or-thats squirming their way through our streams, and YouTube videos of his most famous utterances pass from shortened link to shortened link… And the best comparison to the despairing state we find ourselves in is, fittingly, a John Cusack movie.

Yes, we’re going through one of those “What Does It All Mean?” Things:

And, as is our nature, we corrupt even this act of corruption: Just as the hype builds, so too does the backlash against the hype.

“No one greets him or says hi… I remember him walking around campus one time and groups of people in his way would just split and let him walk through.”

—so too does the snarksters’ handcrafted vitriol:

“Say hello to the first celebrity death that will not die. Next up: an app that counts down to his birthday so the techie fellators can time the orgasm of their intellectual masturbation marathon.”

—so too do the shrines…

His death has become an event, and we tend to it like a garden raising up our icon of an icon of an icon.

3. Speaking Without Meaning

In our post-postmodern world with its medium-messages galore, is there no greater achievement than to have your own face became an icon?

So that it breaks free from the streams and hyperlinks and datum and literally “stands for something?”

So that, at the very sight of You, people shudder beneath the weight of those thousand words and struggle with saying them aloud?

What’s interesting about icons is that they’re felt first: They don’t simply look like one thing while symbolizing many; they also imprint meaning so directly that they bypass conscious thought. (Feeling first; thinking second.) And try as we might, our words are already broken before we’ve even opened our mouths or flexed our fingers before the keys.

What a wonder: To defeat language.

These are not merely pieces of wood:

—nor cans of soup:

This is more than a collection of stars:

And this is no longer simply Steven Paul Jobs:

Icons go beyond language — and nothing, really, can rival that.

Perhaps this is why we compare him to Edison, Ford, Disney, Jesus, even, banking that the same speechlessness invoked by past icons will somehow help us describe this icon.

Perhaps this is why we invoke cliches: “Once in a rare while, somebody comes along…” “It’s been an insanely great honor…” “The world has lost a visionary…”

—or retweet them rather than speak them, preferring the silent endorsement of others’ cliches to our own.

Perhaps this is why we’re all wringing that collective Bad Taste from our mouths, after trying and failing, be it across 140 characters or 10,000 words, to say what we feel — feeling in this case being what we mean.

… Eventually, we withdraw. We shake our heads, sigh, rub at our eyes. We whisper fiercely as though angry with language:

“There are no words.”

We don’t know how to say it. Whereas once we had pictures, now we have only words. We’re struggling to unravel our icon back out into language. (This essay itself being nothing more than an example of that struggle, for I’ve failed at my intention to write about The Death of Steve Jobs and instead written about The Struggle for the Death of Steve Jobs.)

Jason Kottke, one of our great bloggers, wrote a few weeks after the aftermath: “I am incredibly sad this morning. Why am I, why are we, feeling this so intensely?”

… We should be so lucky.

These are rare occasions: The going beyond language, the feeling with such intensity; the birth of masterpieces, the fall of universe-denters.

We’re lucky to have witnessed a handful during our eight-averaged decades. Lucky to have witnessed even one stand on a stage and talk about “magic” and “revolutions,” while rocking back and forth in his New Balance sneakers like a child before class during show-and-tell.

We should close our mouths. We should fold our hands. We should listen.

Because when you have everything to say, you say nothing.

Because sometimes, the silence can be deafening.

4. Universe, Dented: A Postscript

When I got back to LA after my meeting with Apple, I was so jazzed up by my trip that I began researching all of the rumors surrounding the iPhone 5. I speculated as to what 2011’s “And One More Thing” would be: An iPad 3? iTV?? iCar???

But on October 4th, as Tim Cook closed out the “Let’s Talk iPhone” event, I was disappointed to see that there was no One More Thing. Tim, along with all the other execs presenting that day, seemed strangely glum and the very next morning I, along with the rest of the world, would find out why…

On Wednesday, October 5th, I tapped towards Apple’s homepage and stared back at him through the browser and on the phone that he’d built (with, yes, buttons so good that I wanted to lick them). I remember thinking, How strange and cruel and yet beautiful at the same time, the timing of it all… This One More Thing…

But as we approach the 5-month mark and the #ThankYouSteve’s continue to stream past; as the value of $AAPL reaches ever higher, surpassing the value of the company’s two greatest rivals combined; as the rumors build around the greatest screen of them all finally getting some “i” treatment all its own, I realize that I was wrong:

Death was not Steve Jobs’ One More Thing.

It’s a grandiose statement, fit for the headlines of newspapers and blogs, and eye-roll-inducing, I know, but inside it lies something even more dramatic:

There are nearly 7 billion of us now, and none of us will interact with technology, content or one another in quite the same way again.

Seven billion — and it’s entirely possible, given the relentless exponential growth of his products, to imagine a time not too far from now when every single person walks around with an iPhone in his pocket or an iPad in her purse.

Seven billion — and though it’s taken three sprawling societal upheavals (the Agrarian, the Industrial, the Information) to get to where we are today, I for one look around our world and see no end to the things in need of a little *magic* and *revolution*.

No. Death was not Steve Jobs’ One More Thing.

We were… We are.

So let us be quiet.

Let us embrace this Temple in our Minds… This “What Does It All Mean? Thing… This Icon of Icon of Icon… This Feeling With Such Intensity… Let us travel beyond language — and let him swell our hearts and lungs:

And when we regain our voice, I, for one, cannot wait to hear the sound of a world seven billion strong thinking different and speaking of *magic* and *revolutions* once again.

5. NeXT?

Icons are also buttons; buttons represent actions.

What have you shipped today?

Thanks to:

@DailyMarauder

@Gruber

@iJess

@JKottke

Molly

@Serena

Steve

@Tofslie