The world has lost a true visionary. You may find a wonderful tribute to Steve Jobs over at Apple Insider. Jobs indeed left a legacy of “applied technology that shifted the course of human progress in dramatic ways.” He wasn’t just a programmer, or simply a designer or even a marketer. He was all of those things. He had the grand vision of how things should work and be, and he had the personal gifts of perseverance and strength to gather the resources to see his vision to fruition. In some of the tributes that I read yesterday, some writers mentioned lessons that Steve Jobs taught us. A couple important ones were that new ideas and true vision don’t come from focus groups. And another one was that you can only connect the dots by looking back, not forward. One added lesson is to never be afraid of failure.
Thank you Steve Jobs for not only giving us wonderful products and films, but for showing us how science can blend with the liberal arts to enrich our lives. I think an early Apple slogan says it best: “Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
