The other day when my 88-year-old dad wrote a daily blog post — about the life and achievements of Steve Jobs — I realized, once again, just how much Jobs’ life, vision, and achievements are a part of our general culture. More importantly, how much Jobs changed our lives.
One doesn’t need to be digitally savvy, a gadget fanatic, an iPhone evangelist, or even a Macintosh loyalist. All that’s required is experience with one intuitive Apple product — in this case, my dad writing on his iPad — and an interest in the news.
Over the many years that I’ve spent working in the educational technology field, that’s the way it’s gone again and again. Give students, teachers, a senior adult — in fact just about anyone — a Mac computer or iPad, and they use it and work with it independently. We tech people barely see them because they are off using their computers.
As Farhad Manjoo wrote in his Slate appreciation of Steve Jobs, “…he changed what you do every day.”
Memorial Posts Worth Reading
- What Steve Jobs Understood that Our Politicians Don’t – New York Times
- The Man Who Invented Our World – Slate
- The Steve Jobs I Knew – Wall Street Journal
- Steve Jobs the World Pays Tribute – The Guardian
- Steve Jobs and the Media: For the Most Part It Was a Love Affair– Washington Post
- To His Millions of Fans He Was Simply Steve – LA Times
- John Markoff’s obituary/appreciation – New York Times
Media! Tech! Parenting! 