Steve Jobs: 1955-2011

Within hours of his death, Apple co-founder, inventor and innovator Steve Jobs was being compared to scientist Albert Einstein and inventor Thomas Edison. Though he lacked formal scientific training and had no PhD I think most people would consider Steve Jobs a scientist.

He tinkered, explored and experimented as he found ways to bring aesthetic balance to the uber-geeky world of computer science. In fact, he went so far as to turn computer science into a liberal art, a move that resonated with hundreds of millions of people around the globe.

During an NPR interview Jobs said, “In my perspective … science and computer science is a liberal art, it’s something everyone should know how to use, at least, and harness in their life. It’s not something that should be relegated to 5 percent of the population over in the corner. It’s something that everybody should be exposed to and everyone should have mastery of to some extent, and that’s how we viewed computation and these computation devices.”

That was back in the 1996 when he ran a computer company called Next, which was busy experimenting with ways to make computers less business and more friendly. He sold his company to Apple the next year and then went on to create the iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad. From the beginning he recognized that pretty fonts, eye-popping colors, high-quality images and eventually top notch audio and high resolution video were the necessary ingredients to make the personal computer more personal.

Along the way, the visionary who got a reputation as a business anathema for never doing market research, rode his gut feelings all the way to the bank. He started Apple in the 1970s, was ousted in 1987 and returned ten years later to run the company until resigning as CEO in August.

The global reaction to Jobs’ death is a clear indicator of the impact he had on our lives. He helped push computers down in size and put the Internet in all of our pockets. He took the promise of tablet computing and created a new gold rush for touchscreen technology.

But above all, Steve Jobs touched our lives so deeply because he stood for what is possible not just what is available. In tributes outside Apple stores from San Jose to Sydney mourners lay tributes in front of the 300 worldwide Apple retail stores.

Jobs demonstrated what it is to be a citizen scientist and gave us all the impetus and encouragement to follow our passions. Sure, he and his company gave us the devices and put the tools in our hands. But then he stepped back and let us create, collaborate, communicate and innovate.

When digital music almost destroyed the record industry and piracy was replacing valid music sales, Jobs opened iTunes and invented the 99-cent song. Not only did that stave off online anarchy in unlicensed music, it helped the music industry reinvent itself and created new opportunities for unsigned bands and indie artists to find followings and make a living. Jobs created jobs.

Then in 2007, the biggest disruption came as Jobs in a dramatic yet to-the-point product launch announced the reinvention of the telephone with the iPhone. Not only did that change the telephony game but it created mechanism for individuals to innovate applications that can run on the iPhone and all smartphones. Jobs created more jobs. A lot more jobs.

Now, four years after opening the App Store, there are over 550,000 applications available for free or for purchase. App makers are busy innovating solutions to minor and major problems, ranging from how to get a date to where to find the nearest bus.

The elegance of Steve Jobs lies in his ability to listen to his gut as he presented a new technology product to an audience that had never imagined such a thing before. Then he stepped back and watched what the user did with the technology.

Science like many other sectors of our culture embraced Steve Jobs’ products with open arms. Now thousands of applications for iPhone and other smartphones are making collection of big data easy and affordable. As a result, crowdsourcing is becoming routine, for everything from counting animal species to measuring happiness through social utilities like Facebook or Twitter.

The deep sadness that total strangers felt upon learning the news that Steve Jobs had died shows the intimate impact the visionary citizen scientist had on our lives. Many feel that something big has been lost. While that’s true. Steve Jobs is gone and with him all of his future ideas. But he inspired us all to create our futures, follow our passions and innovate for a better tomorrow.

In describing the corporate culture at Apple Jobs said, “There wasn’t a hierarchy of ideas that mapped into the hierarchy of the organization. In other words: great ideas could come from anywhere.”

Now it’s up to us to continue where he left off.

Steve Jobs changed how we integrate technology in our lives. He made it more attractive and more personal. But he also made the leap from us being run by technology to using technology as a tool to pursue our dreams, invent, and make the impossible possible.

He will forever be remembered as the man who made the world a little more science fictional.

Apple’s Impact is in our DNA

excerpted from Callie Neylan’s NPR blog post about news of Steve Jobs’ resignation in August

Why do so many of us get so emotional about Steve Jobs, to the point of crying upon hearing he had cancer and tearing up last week while reading his poignant resignation letter? The answer to all of these questions, I think, lies in mathematics and our own DNA.

I’ve been researching design aesthetics recently, and in a nutshell here’s what I’ve found: Beauty is more objective than you might think. It’s based on numbers and proportions. As humans, we’re biologically programmed to seek out and respond to these numbers and proportions because they indicate superiority, in everything from the human form, to great works of art, to musical patterns, to plants, to architecture and to product design. The screen of a Macbook, for example, is a Golden Rectangle, which is based on this magical number: 1.6178, also known as the Golden Ratio, the Golden Mean or the Divine Proportion.
And the pulsing light that softly undulates to indicate that your Macbook is asleep? Well, that mesmerizing light mimics the rhythm of a human heartbeat, a deeply resonating mathematical pattern which can also be found in tidal flows, DNA sequences and blissful cognitive states.

The inclusion of these patterns in Apple’s designs is no accident. Steve Jobs knows better than any other modern-day CEO our biological attraction to beautiful things. With the help of Jonathan Ive, Apple’s VP of industrial design, he exploits our biological tendencies to give us exactly what we want. He has an uncanny ability to tap into our genetic propensity toward beauty, seducing us through exquisite product design.