Steve Jobs, the man

Steve Jobs by Waltar Isaccson

Published by Simon & Schuster, 2011

Steve Jobs has been acclaimed as an innovator par excellence, who introduced a range of e-products into the world.  This biography is as much about Jobs, the man as it is about the effort he put into the design of his products.  This kind of quick biography has got its share of admirers, but was little taxing to read with all the inanities contained in it.  There was surfeit of information on all aspects of his life, parents, both biological and foster, family, adoption, his experiments with vegetarianism, girl friends, sex, his colleagues at Apple, Mac, Pixer and so on.  

One bit of interesting information was his life-long obsession with vegetarianism.  At the height of his battle with cancer, when the doctors advised him to consume meat to improve his metabolism, Jobs still believed his vegetarian food would come to his rescue.  The personality of Steve Jobs  imitated the  social trend of the times.  As Isaacson puts it, “Vegetarianism and Zen Buddhism, meditation and spirituality,  acid and rock, these were the hallmarks of the enlightenment-seeking subculture of the era.  In addition to all these, there was an electronic geekiness in his soul which would combine with the rest to form a potent mix.”  But did this mixture establish the power of computer industry, which was such an awe-inspiring feature of the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries? The musician Bano had the answer to this question, “The people who invented the twenty first century were pot-smoking, sandal wearing hippies from the west coast like Steve because they saw differently.  The hierarchical systems of the East Coast, England, Germany and Japan do not encourage this different thinking.  The sixties produced an anarchic mind-set that is great for imaging a world not yet in existence.”  We have heard this explanation before; about how anarchism inverts the world to invent a new world view.

The book has an ample measure of the qualities of Steve Jobs.  His industry   steadfastness, commitment, eye for excellence and intolerance of mediocrity come through.  Also on display are his machination, even treachery, his manipulation and what the author frequently calls, ‘Reality distortion’ which comes to his aid in promoting the new products he has created.  Given all his innovation, Steve Jobs still stood on the wrong side of the digital divide.   His attempt to integrate hardware and software may have produced great product design, but was a business failure, in a world which functions on cohabitation.  This book has a mine of  information  about Jobs which would surely be grasped by his fans.