Lieutenant Dan got me invested in some kind of fruit company. So then I got a call from him, saying we don’t have to worry about money no more. And I said, that’s good! One less thing. (C) Forest Gump
Last week event left nobody aside. Steve Jobs left this world. My Facebook wall was full of remembering posts from fans and just sympathizing people. One day past and the wall changed – people got tired of all this hysteria and starting making fun and showing their angry on what Jobs did during his life. Me personally, I have nothing to do with both of these groups. I don’t like the idea of making saint of any man, especially of a business man, who was talented to make money on people’s lack of true belief. From other side, Jobs made his valuable input in changing the world culture and sometimes to better.
This contravention is very interesting for me. From one side, Steve jobs became an icon of modern consumerism. From another side, Jobs’s input into education of young generation through the production of Pixar is amazing. And that is the point, I want to speak about.
Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” sometimes reminds me our modern society, where the idea of consuming goods becomes more and more as a top idea of the whole modern culture. Huxley introduced new religion – Fordism. This new world is working on the principles of assembly line, introduced by Henry Ford. Every person is a small detail in huge Economical machine. The best description of our society, going to this direction was done by Erich Fromm in his essays about modern society mechanization. So, what about Steve Jobs? He developed a new sect, which reminds some Christian modern sects and at the same time have absolutely different direction. It uses lack of believe, which appeared during the 20th century in western society and coming with the semi-pagan love to artefacts (left by Christianity), develops new religion and belief. Steve Jobs had a huge talent to be a business evangelist and that even more makes his as an icon of modern consumerism.
I have an old iPod mini, which was presented me by my company 6 years ago. It has only 2Gb storage and my wife uses it about every day. She has a lot of problems with managing music in it, due to the reason that there is only Linux OS in our home. But what I want to say is, this iPod works for 6 years already and nothing happens to it. My wife says that battery started working less for about 25%. I see that Apple produces stuff, which can work maybe not forever, but for really long time. But they make people buy new products just after they appear. That it the part of modern business scheme and ideology. A consumer should buy all the time, otherwise Economics stops. This led us to the recent economical crisis. And G-d bless this crisis, because people started thinking a little by their own, but not only from TV ads.
I mentioned Pixar above and that is real problem which bothers me. Every Pixar’s animation proclaims a strong position what is wrong and what is good. I love Pixar for the ideology, it provides.
All three Toy stories tell kids, how it is important to save toys and play with them all childhood. After the childhood ends, share these toys with other kids. Buying new toys or just throwing them away – is bad behaviour.
Maybe somebody don’t know yet, but Wall-e is the story about Noah Arc and at the same time – “Brave New World”. The idea is, that if we’ll behave the same as we do now – consuming more and more, finally our planet will be flooded with our waste and we’ll need to fly away from it. Only robots and cockroaches will survive on Earth.
My daughter calls Up as a story about a house with balloons. The same as above – save old, do not replace with new so fast.
I am not fan of Apple or Steve Jobs, but I am a fan of Pixar. And for that I want to thank Jobs. I can be critical towards all these semi-religious insanity around Apple, but at the same time I should recognize that this company with Steve aboard brought pretty much of innovation to modern technology. And thank you Steve for that also.