What is most surprising to me about this biography is that such an even-handed, honest, yet affectionate, book could be written during the lifetime of a unique and difficult individual. It reads like a novel. But who could have made up such a protean figure? Isaacson sheds light on the forces that shaped Steve Jobs – his unusual parentage, his adoptive home, the revelation at the age of 30 or so that his birth parents subsequently married (and divorced) and he had a full sister, the novelist Mona Simpson…it all sounds almost unbelievable…. The author also skillfully weaves most of the important figures and events of the “digital revolution” into a compelling history of the times. Jobs obsession with perfect design and his ability to get his associates to produce seemingly impossible results due his “reality distortion field” are legendary. So were his quirks – his odd diets and eating habits; his questionable hygiene; his problems with relating with other humans. What didn’t he touch in his relatively short lifetime? Personal computers, the way we listen to music, smart phones, the magical movies of Pixar – at the end of the book, one mourns not only Jobs, but the creative ideas that may have died with him. As Jobs said shortly before his death, “I like to think that something survives after you die. It is strange to think that you accumulate all this experience, and maybe a little wisdom, and it just goes away. So I really want to believe that something survives, that maybe your consciousness endures. But on the other hand, perhaps it’s like and on-off switch, Click! And you’re done. Maybe that’s why I never liked to put on-off switches on Apple devices.” 571 pp.
No comments:
Post a Comment