The Reaction: Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple and essentially its driving force as it grew from small computer company to global technology icon, as well as the former CEO of Pixar, has died at the age of 56.

I've never been an Apple cultist, the way so many technophiles are, though I do have an iPod and love it so much that it's almost always with me, a gadget constantly at my side, for better and for worse. And, sure, I may acquire more Apple products down the road. There's no denying their high quality and appeal.

But whatever you or I may think of the company and its products, or of its obsessive loyalists, it is hard to imagine our hyper-technological world without Apple. Its mixture of style and substance is legendary, the iPod and the iPad, the iPhone and the Mac, its brand seemingly ubiquitous, its reach seemingly endless, the white cable and earbuds one of the defining accessories of our time.

You know the criticism. Apple has become everything it was never supposed to be, everything it fought. It's like how the Boston Red Sox have become the New York Yankees: rich and successful, arrogant and brash. Apple has become Microsoft, but even more iconic. It's not good vs. evil anymore, as its loyalists once thought. Maybe there is no good and evil. There's really just technology merged with consumerism, and a public desperate for the latest gadget, people finding meaning in, identifying with, and ultimately melting into the brands they consume, whether it's that guy in the Starbucks with his MacBook or that gal on the train with her iPod. They are Apple. Apple are they. Sometimes it's hard to know where the one stops and the other begins.

There is much to be said about technology's hold on our culture -- and, if you look at it a certain way, the ongoing degradation of our humanity. Let's leave that aside for now. Technology may control us, and may eventually overtake us, but another perspective it can also liberate us. I'm not sure where I stand on all this. Somewhere in the middle, I suppose, contemplating both sides, listening to my iPod.

So what, then, of Steve Jobs? He was a visionary, a man not just in touch with the Zeitgeist but actually constructing it, building Apple into a transformative giant, a provider of technology that has changed the way we live at a profoundly intimate level. For better or for worse, there's something quite incredible about what he accomplished. Apple will continue without him, but it's not clear if it will ever be anything but a respectable shadow of its former, Jobs-led self.