“It’s staggering to contemplate how much the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs understood about modern America that those who govern it still don’t.”
Steve Jobs was a master at simultaneously goading our sense of individuality and fueling our yearning for community (a topic close to my heart.) According to this New York Times editorial, Jobs solved what appears to be a paradox by asking people to be creative within a given framework and to use a common vocabulary for expressing their individuality. After all, creativity needs to be translated in terms that other people can understand.
Mr. Jobs understood, intuitively, that Americans were breaking away from the last era’s large institutions and centralized decision-making, that technology would free them from traditional workplaces and the limits of a physical marketplace.
This was the underlying point of “think different” — that our choices were no longer dictated by the whims of huge companies or the offerings at the local mall. This was the point of a computer that enabled you to customize virtually every setting, no matter how inconsequential, so that no two users had the exact same experience. This was the essential insight behind devices driven by a universe of new apps, downloaded in seconds depending on your lifestyle and interests.
At the same time, while Mr. Jobs saw a society moving inexorably toward individual choice, he also seemed to understand that such individuality breeds detachment and confusion. And so Apple sought to fill that vacuum by making itself into more than a manufacturer; it became a kind of community, too, with storefronts and stickers and a membership that enabled you to get your e-mail, or video-conference with your friends, or post a Web page of your vacation photos.
