----------Just like that, I found out1. It was simple, succinct, powerful. Social networks exploded with R.I.P. tweets. Is there another billionaire CEO out there that would elicit such an outpouring?
FINANCIAL TIMES Breaking News
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Apple says Steve Jobs has died, aged 56
Apple says Steve Jobs died on Wednesday, aged 56, after a prolonged battle with pancreatic cancer
***
I do not own a single Apple product2. I don't even use iTunes. But I felt some sadness all the same. What the world lost in Steve Jobs is, as The Onion puts it, the Last American Who Knew What The Fuck He Was Doing. Jobs was at the vanguard of 1.) personal computers, 2.) graphical user interfaces, 3.) digital animation3, 4.) MP3 players, 5.) digital downloads, 6.) touchscreen smart phones, and 7.) tablet PCs. That is a staggering, just staggering, string of hits. Although I don't own any Apple products, I own plenty of Apple-wannabe products.
Steve Jobs was not a technologist. He was a human being who understood us, his fellow human beings, better than we understand ourselves. He understood desire, beauty, and aspiration, complex, subconscious emotions that drive us to wake up every morning, seeking... something. That is who the world lost, a man who was closer to solving the meaning of life than the most rest of us4. And now, we are adrift, the vacuum Jobs has left will be filled by... who? Folks who do "market research"? Or dreamers? Risk-takers?
The world desperately needs the latter. David Brooks calls it the lost of the utopian élan. Where are the flying cars? Where are the cities in the clouds? Where are the civilian space shuttles to Mars?
What if Steve Jobs stayed healthy? What could he have accomplished? Apple is the biggest company on earth, with $75 billion bucks at their disposal. Conventional investor wisdom cries for it to be returned to shareholders. But screw that. Apple is not a company that can be defined. What if Steve Jobs kept living for years and years to come? What would he have dreamed up for us? How would he have deployed his $75 billion? Can $75 billion build us flying cars? Can $75 billion discover cold fusion? Can $75 billion take us to the moon and back?
Now we'll never know. And that's why I am sad.
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1I learn a surprising amount of non-financial breaking news from my FT e-mail alerts. The death of Osama Bin Laden was another memorable one-liner.
2Not 100% true. I still have the white ear-buds that the Nano came with, which I am using it now as I type.
3More of Jobs's wealth, $4 billion-ish, comes from Disney stock, which he got when he sold them Pixar, than from Apple stock ($2 billion-ish).
4A little dramatic? Maybe. But he got Stephen Colbert to beg.
