Steve Jobs certainly isn’t the first high tech luminary to pass away. But as one of the genius-like creators who personifies Silicon Valley, one of the icons who helped birth the PC, made laptops part of our lives, created a smart phone that feels as necessary as a wallet, and merged the two into a tablet, he left a big hole in the valley I call home.
In a place where everything is infinite, after all, Apple headquarters is located on a street called Infinite Loop, his death hit hard. Silicon Valley is filled with people who tend to imagine their brains and education provide the ability to create a perfect world. But in a place where the posibilities seem limitless, it’s easy to forget that no one gets an infinite life span.
I’ve thought about it for years, but haven’t yet been able to put my finger on why Apple products evoke such desire. I had to take my laptop for repair two days after Steve’s death. As always, walking into the Apple store made me want devices. Devices I already have in earlier models. The designs that roll out of that company are works of art, and the beauty touches something inside us that makes us feel life can be perfect, as beautiful and simple as the swoosh of a finger. Of course, Steve Jobs didn’t personally design all of that hardware or write the software, but he created the vision that changed the way we work, communicate, and play.
Apple products make the user feel as if there’s such a thing as perfection. The sleek case, the simple logo, the well-seated closure of the laptop, the swooshing of everything. Heck, I love the boxes the things come in!
I bought my first Apple product in 1999 – a black MacBook. My favorite thing was watching the power light pulse like a heartbeat when the laptop was closed. Right now, Silicon Valley feels a bit like the heart has stopped beating, although of course it hasn’t.
Since then, one Mac laptop or another has been the pulse of my fiction writing. The iPod allowed me to pick music for my mood. The iPad introduced me to eBooks, which changed the course of my writing career.
The iPhone freed me and put chains around me. I can shorten my work day by being more efficient – responding to email while I wait for meetings to start or making phone calls while I walk across campus or drive home. It embodies increased productivity and, theoretically, more leisure time. It also means I’ve had management text me when I was on vacation and that I’ve checked email at 2am many, many times.
One of the books I’m reading right now is Buddha Standard Time. It’s about recognizing that our experience of time is not fixed. (The old “time flies when you’re having fun” idea.) Among other things, the author suggests focusing on one thing at a time, not the vaunted “multi-tasking”. He also points out that electronic devices have a way of slicing our time into ever-smaller fragments. This resonated so strongly that I decided I would no longer check email or go online between 7:30 at night and 6:30 in the morning. My success has been erratic, but I’m definitely done with the 2am thing.
Since Steve Jobs was a Zen Buddhist, it seems fitting that I’m reading this book now. It makes me wonder whether he was chained to his iPhone.
Time is finite, but it can feel infinite when I sit outside with my husband, drinking a glass of wine, watching the hummingbirds and squirrels, listening to our iTunes.
I hope you have fun following the relay and learning more about Dorte and her crime fiction.
