STEVE THE GEEK

      I
am quite aware of the extent to which millions of people across the world are attached
to Apple’s “i-gadget” family (almost like an adaptor,
connector, or charger), and can therefore sense the depths of their shock
and sense of disconnect at the tragic passing of the “i-guru”
Steven Paul Jobs. In fact, many of them received the news of Steve’s
death on one of his own inventions, which made their grief all the more
poignant. Although I am an unrepentant and incorrigible “i-illiterate,”
I found myself inescapably drawn to Steve, back in the late 1980s, when I saw
the first Mac of my life at a DTP bureau in a city in southern India. Mac’s GUI,
mouse, feather-touch keyboard (“Life is
smoother since we can touch instead of push”], and several other snazzy
features struck me like some strange magic, and I can recall times when Mac was
the apple of the computer world’s eye, and its SA (Sex Appeal) and
price-tag were so high that snobs would carry a Mac just to make a fashion statement.
But, in my case, more than the machine itself, its maker mesmerized me, and Steve breaking
conventions impressed me more than Steve making inventions.  Steve’s traumatic
early childhood experiences, particularly his unwed parents putting him up for
adoption; his dropping out of college; his garage start-up; his conversion to
Zen Buddhism (and consequent head-shaving); his counterculture
experiments; his dismissal from his own Apple Inc.; his
counter-challenge to cancer (the rebel’s
own cells rebelled against him, and in the beginning, he shunned mainstream
medicine) — there was nothing about him, in style as well as substance, that
was not sensational.  In my view, Steve was more an iConoclast than an iCon, and I loved seeing him
defying tradition more than defining tastes & trends. To me, Steve was
essentially a person of transterrestrial brilliance and a proto-specimen of a technological civilization to come.
      What “NeXT”?
Maybe some insanely ingenious nerds will keep Steve-the-Geek’s inventive legacy
alive, and present the world with i-peds,
i-pids, i-puds, and other game-changing gizmos
to carry users’ sensory experiences still deeper. But, I personally look
forward to the advent of a “pan-creative” Steve-like genius who can present a
cure for pancreatic and other pernicious cancers. Also, I anxiously
anticipate the emergence a Pixar that can physically reanimate the likes of
Steve Jobs!

      It
is now time to wish “RIP” to Steve, but I refrain from doing so, because I know
Steve is not the type to ever “rest in peace.” Indeed, he will already be
trying to i-connect to his successors from his pad in “outer cyberspace,” and he
will stay logged in to the memory systems of his countless fans and will continue
to inspire them as long as history lasts.

Live hungrily, foolishly – and dangerously,

      c_ta_rom,
India.

* It may be worth noting here that “Job” is the protagonist of an Old
Testament parable of the righteous sufferer. Steven means “crown, garland and honour” in
Greek, and St. Stephen is revered as the first
martyr of the Christian Church.

* Just like Randy Pausch delivering his famous “Last Lecture” at Carnegie
Mellon, Steve Jobs presented an immortal Graduation Commencement Address at Stanford University in 2005. Some of the lines of
this Address bear reproduction here: “… don’t waste it (your time)
living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with
the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions
drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow
your heart and intuition.”

c_ta_rom, India.