I’ve never been a fan of Steve Jobs.
His reality distortion field always rubbed me the wrong way (is it really magical, Steve? Really?) and I always found the slavish devotees to all things Mac as a little pompous.
Yes, Apple makes some quality products, but I think their greatest achievement was to make purchasing electronics a way to make someone feel superior to others.
Bravo.
Consequently, I’ve always been annoyed with the hagiography of Steve Jobs, and if I hear someone else quote from his Stanford commencement address in the same hushed tones as a New Testament reading, I’m going to…well, nothing, because Apple won a long time ago.
But the world turns, and it turns out that Steve Jobs was a bit of a jerk, according to a recent memoir by his daughter.
Recently, Apple’s polish has faded a bit, and even Microsoft, long derided as uncool and the “evil empire”, seems newly resurgent, briefly beating Apple’s valuation last year.
My how the world turns.
But all my annoyance aside, I have to give Steve Jobs a little credit: he didn’t let his kids use Apple devices.
Too crazy to be true
But it’s true.
In an article a few years back in the New York Times, a journalist interviewed not only Steve Jobs but also Walter Isaacson, who wrote the definitive biography on Steve Jobs.
We limit how much technology our kids use at home.
Steve Jobs, head of the company that addicted everyone to smartphones
The article goes on to note that Mr. Jobs was not alone, that other tech gurus, such as Bill Gates, and Chris Anderson (former editor of WIRED magazine). Mr. Anderson gets the even better line:
[W]e have seen the dangers of technology firsthand. I’ve seen it in myself, I don’t want to see that happen to my kids.
Chris Anderson, tech guru
What are they afraid of?
Just let this sink in. What is the “it” that he is talking about?
Could it be addiction? Could it be a low-attention span? Could it be the lack of being able to remain present in one’s life?
It’s not just the CEOs too. In a more recent article, Business Insider mentions how being a low-tech household in Silicon Valley isn’t uncommon, even when your parents create these tools and apps.
The tech companies do know that the sooner you get kids, adolescents, or teenagers used to your platform, the easier it is to become a lifelong habit
From the article, someone in the tech world I’d never heard of to be honest
If that sounds like the tobacco industry or the fast food industry, the article has beat you to it.
What do these people know that we don’t? They know the business model. They know the psychology. They know that they are trying to get us addicted so that they can sell more things. Sell more things to us, and sell more of us to others.
Some of those big-name technology people, those closest to the products so many of us claim to “need”, don’t use those products.
Think of this the next time you go “I could never live without my iPhone”. Maybe you’ve been programmed to say that. Maybe you’ve been swindled. Maybe that’s the reality distortion field, still at work from beyond the grave.
