Translated material
Rainbow colored brains
Founder of Apple Inc. resigns from his position in the company. The world of high-tech is returning to the gray routine of business
Steve Jobs, who has been regularly called a businessman all over the world for several decades now and is considered a figure in the computer field, in fact, has never been either a businessman or a figure in the direct and ordinary sense of the word. He...
Steve Jobs, who has been regularly called a businessman all over the world for several decades now and is considered a figure in the computer field, in fact, has never been either a businessman or a figure in the direct and ordinary sense of the word. He was included in all kinds of ratings of high-tech figures and had his permanent place in the Forbes magazine list, but all this was an optical illusion and a stereotype of thinking that makes you see a sage in a madman or a king in a holy fool. In fact, Jobs, this Californian with Syrian blood, Armenian roots and the manners of a delusional hippie, was a shaman who created new rituals and magic items of the high-tech era. A priest of a faith that he himself invented.
The symbol of this faith and its core was an apple, which Jobs received from hand to hand from the biblical Eve and at the same time stole from the Beatles. The Beatles, who had a company of the same name, were offended and sued him for a long time. Eva was not offended, but was only glad, because Jobs, like a traveling preacher, offered this apple of temptation and happiness to everyone for almost forty years in a row. He created a sect of apple people who looked at other computer users with a hidden grin of superiority. They, like Freemasons and Martinists, knew some great secret that was inaccessible to ordinary users of the Wintel platform.
Were Jobs' computers and operating systems so superior to what Gates offered the world? This has been discussed for many years and will continue to be argued for many more years. But it's not about comparative characteristics, it's about something else. The humble boy Gates sold computers as computers and operating systems as operating systems. He never positioned Windows as a revelation, and Microsoft Office as manna from heaven. Jobs, on the other hand, played by different rules and in a different field. Everything that he put on the market, he himself considered a miracle, a prophecy, a fantastic message from the future and magic drawn directly from his expanded consciousness. Jobs and Gates played different games. They are incomparable, as are incomparable the manufacturer of irons, modestly and persistently improving its product from version to version, and the mad prophet with a taste for Bohemia, specializing in the creation of artifacts with built-in microprocessors.
Jobs himself never denied this. He walked out of step and acted against the rules. Others tried to bring a new model to market at a time when the public had a need, and Jobs five years earlier. It was still far from the need, and he had already presented some amazing units in fantastic forms. Related to this are his incessant arguments and scandals with Apple managers and directors, who were businessmen, not prophets, and did not understand why invest millions of dollars in a thing that would resonate with 0.03% of consumers. Jobs fought them all his life - "Do you want to sell soda for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?" - and it cannot be said that it is always successful. He was kicked out of his own company for the sake of stability and predictability, and the result was failure and stagnation. From the very beginning, the Jobs case was infected with the virus of artistic madness and could not exist without it.
He had ideas that bordered on fantasy. For example, the NeXTcube computer in the form of a black opaque cube, endowed with incredible computing power and as if designed to travel around the Galaxy; or a translucent iBook in orange and indigo, which would be nice in the hands of a cheerful surfer racing on a wave to the music of The Chantays; or a small iPod, which is a magic mirror in which you can see the whole world; or the dream of all geeks, an iPad that can be controlled by making passes over the display with your hands. All these were not just novelties of the market, but really strange and wonderful objects that expanded the boundaries of consciousness. Because the consciousness, driven into the boundaries, always represented the computer as a gray box with a keyboard on a wire-leash, and Jobs felt sick, sickened, twisted and exploded from this miserable idea of gray brains. And he exploded with curses, which is why many considered him a boor-neurasthenic and a rude-paranoid.
The expansion of consciousness was one of the main concepts in the philosophy of Jobs, who, by the way, not only did not hide the fact that he tried LCD, but also claimed that it was one of the most important experiences in his life. He picked up this philosophy from Timothy Leary, from the nameless heroes of the Californian hippie communes he hung out in when he was younger, from Hollywood fantasy movies, and from chatting with friends in the garage where he built his first computers in the early 70s. Others played garage rock, and he built garage computers, and it was really the same back then: one thrill, one drive, one dream, one fun. He took clothes from those years with him and spent his whole life in them, and these were old jeans and an eternal black turtleneck, in which he appeared at boards of directors, and at meetings with investors in expensive suits, and at world presentations of his amazing products. And now, when this tired, long-unshaven, gray-bearded man with a haggard face, a bouquet of diseases and a transplanted liver leaves his post at Apple Inc, the high-tech world is losing its rainbow colors before our eyes and is returning to the gray everyday life of business.