Biting the Apple
Apples have a history…
I use Apple computer technology. Apple products were, when first introduced, dramatically different from the existing technology – especially computers. They were the upstarts, the up setters.
In short, in that cultural landscape, business people used PCs, artists and creators used Apples.
Computers were on desks. Phones were wired and attached to walls, and phones and computers were completely different and separated from each other.
To see them as one, was a cultural breakthrough that has changed the world forever.
Steve Jobs was, by any definition, visionary. Bill Gates, of Microsoft had the goal of a computer on every desk; Steve Jobs envisioned a computer in every pocket.
Steve Jobs had a simple organizing principle – one that has been left behind. And not for our benefit. Or for the benefit of technology; what is the point of technology, if not to be of service to people?
“The computer is a bicycle for the mind.” Steve Jobs
A bicycle is a tool. And as a tool, it could not be simpler – or more life changing. A bicycle is the ultimate user-controlled system. No batteries, no external controls, no monitoring. The smart phone is, of course, not so simple. Or so free.
But the principle is equally simple – and powerful; the user is the rider. The rider decides where to go. The bicycle, simply and transparently, amplifies the rider’s capacity to get there.
The destination is not within the bicycle’s level of understanding. The destination and purpose, if any, belongs to the rider. The tool serves. The human directs.
And by “people”, Jobs did not limit his vison to individuals. Technology should allow and encourage us all to be more fully human.
If technology doesn’t do that, or forces us to conform to its parameters, it fails. And we as humans – as the tool makers - have failed to keep mastery over our own tools.
About a decade before the rest of us, he could see a time when we would communicate like angels across the known universe- for free.
And, in his eye, and many of us back then, saw us as species making a leap, consolidating a connection, affirming our humanity across borders, governments and traditions and making, literally becoming, a new species – a networked, one-humanity sprawled across the globe, hand in hand, drawing on traditions, on dreams and visions, reaching for the unknowable, the forever and the immediate.
Humanity, as Steve Jobs saw it, was, in many senses, stepping into a new world, a world, to a degree never imagined before, made in our own image.
And we, some of us at least, saw that it could be, would be, like the original garden – “very good”.
But life, as we know, is full of plot twists and unexpected…
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of…
The most content, satisfied and comfortable people are never the ones pursuing stuff; they are pursuing truth, justice, connection, craft, beauty, purpose, meaning and service.
And our technology, at its best, should facilitate those higher intentions.
But as we are learning all too well, the technology in our pocket is contributing to a generational mental health crisis – among other things.
Scammers, AI, revenge-porn and a dozen other tech intrusions and disruptions have invaded home, school, work and our own minds.
Privacy has evaporated. Dependency and obsession, if not outright addiction, to our devices have become near standard.
How about three thousand dollars for shutting off social media? That particular deal is over, but the assumption that one’s social media presence is of that much value is a barometer of the value of clicks.
When it comes to privacy, or at least monetizing its erasure, all the tech companies are bidding on us. On access to us.
“We the people” are no longer free and relatively autonomous; we have, without our consent,(or knowledge in most cases) become “We the monitored”.
That computer in our pocket has become the ultimate monitor of our every move, every contact, every purchase and much, much more.
Before it became just another all-consuming, self-absorbed, profit-obsessed company, Steve Jobs had a vision for Apple. He insisted that Apple situate itself firmly at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts.
That was not marketing. That was an epistemological and ideological promise; an urgent rallying cry with the clear message that the tool and its purpose come from different domains, different, often competing terrains and systems - and the human purpose must have - and must keep - primacy.
The user of any (or no) technology, was, before they were a “user” a citizen, parent, neighbor, voter, human being – with specific, individual agency. But that is not true now; we are all passengers, spectators, users, - expendable and interchangeable parts of a machine – a network - that has limited use for us now.
The ultimate irony of any system or ideology or doctrine is that ultimately, no one is good enough. No woman is “trad” enough. No individual – or competing agency or business - can be trusted, no purity test holds for very long, no ideological belief will be stable and reliable.
Steve Jobs intended Apple products to be the fluid interface of the humanities with technology.
Hackers back then (when hackers were the good guys) had a simple first principle; information wants to be free.
Knowledge, information, pure unbiased data was meant to be freely available and, of course, free of cost. Hackers were people (back then) who set information free. And, it was presumed, people, of all backgrounds would also be set free.
For a glimpse of that view of what technology could do for us (as opposed to what it would do TO us) can be found in Steve Jobs’ Stanford graduation speech (he was not a Stanford student – or a graduate of any college).
You can see a video here.
I never met Steve Jobs that I know of, but I am very close to his age, and, in our twenties, we traveled in very much the same circles of artists, dreamers and ramblers up and down the West Coast of the US. In those years, the West Coast, of North America, from British Columbia to Mexico, was the epicenter of music, technology, dreams and visions of the future that seemed to be in our hands. And it all seemed to be open to anyone who had a crazy, impossible gift, vision or contribution to the recipe of the life that stretched before us with nothing, except more improvisational, unlikely, and often indescribable encounters.
Colleges became the unofficial synergistic centers, where artists, writers, mimes and calligraphers, and many others, joined forces in creating worlds beyond profit margins and predictable careers.
In his Stanford speech, he mentions sleeping on a friend’s dorm room floor at Reed College. I did the same thing at about the same time, but I slept on the floor of a dorm at Cal Arts.
And yes, that is the creative home of Pixar – among other humanities and technology nexus points.
I had many late-night conversations and improv poetry/music gatherings around fires and star-filled nights with meandering what-ifs that later turned into songs or films.
The assumption back then, obviously naïve now, was that truth and inherent human goodness would prevail, that there would be no such thing as a misinformation industry. That people, given a choice between the true and the false, the real and the unreal, would overwhelmingly choose the truth, and the real.
We were wrong, of course.
All of us have learned a lot about humanity since then. And even a little about technology.
Now we know that misinformation and deliberate distortions or even AI generated falsehoods are a major threat to our culture and economy – to every culture and economy. To humanity itself.
When we cultivate and learn to accept the obviously false and unreal, what have we become?
Bare, simple “elegant” truth was the goal back then. And many of us took it as a given that truth would be not only the result, but the continuing intent of human beings. We never imagined that muddy and flimsy lies would be appealing to so many.
Maybe we weren’t wrong.
An old saying is “Man made the town, and then the town made the man”.
Perhaps the same is true of embracing technologies. From cars to televisions, from grocery stores to plastics, every technology attempts to remake humanity in its own image. And some succeed.
The darkest and deadliest aspects of any technology take years, decades, maybe even centuries for us to recognize, and by then, of course, it is far too late to return to what we were, what we had, what we almost became.
Truth, creativity and a celebration of humanity were only a few of Steve Jobs’ guiding principles.
He tended to see horizons few of his peers could even imagine. We inhabit, in many ways, the shadows of his dreams. Truth and lies float unencumbered across the web he imagined.
Steve Jobs was one of those people who was always a few steps ahead of everyone else. That might even be true in his choice of the logo; the apple with a bite out of it.
It was an obvious nod to the fruit at the center of the Garden of Eden – the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The bite obviously represented a bite taken – a step, presumably deliberate, into a world of knowledge perhaps too vast for any mere mortal.