I've always found the seductive nature of Apple products creepy, the way people fetishize their iPhones and laptops, petting them like a vain movie villain petting a cat.
It doesn't bother me as much that, say, custom car owners fetishize their shiny objects -- at least they built the object themselves. And I love computers as much as the next geek, but it's not the same magical/mystical relationship Apple encourages with its sealed, candy-coated architecture.
UWS Temple
At least devotees lighting candles for musicians (like at John Lennon's Strawberry Fields memorial) are in love with something intangible -- the music and/or the personality -- and not a shiny consumer object.
I think there's an important difference between the way an object makes you feel and the way a song or story makes you feel, and I think there's a huge price to pay when the world is given over to the immediate, narcissistic convenience embodied in Mr. Jobs' shiny "magical" objects.
[Steve Jobs / Apple Cult 2]
[Steve Jobs / Apple Cult Servant]
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7 comments:
thank you for saying this. i enjoy my Apple products, too, but they are not fetish objects and it's not spiritual, and Jobs did a lot to help create the zombie culture we live in today.
he died young, and that is sad. but he was not a god. he was a CEO.
Great and different point of view. I hope you don't get crucified by the "apple community". Something else to think about is how everyone abuses the word "world" lately, that is so wrong. Not ALL the WORLD knows apple.
Thanks both of you for your comments. It is sad someone so full of life died so young.
Indeed. Thank you for saying this. One must be brutally honest with oneself: Are we really any happier now that we have all these new digital toys?
- Versus
Kurt, thought you'd connect with this one:
http://gawker.com/5847338/steve-jobs-was-not-god
I love your mission, your point of view and your blog! I read your heartbreaking posts about the state of things in NYC if only to feel like I am there, walking down those disappearing streets/ appreciating all of the things that NYC has had to offer for years and years. I am a retailer in Chicago who tries to put the best of what I am into my store every day. But it's tough to be a store owner today AND give "the lady what she wants" (Marshall Fields.) Even Steve Jobs admitted that he didn't listen to focus groups because consumers didn't always know what they wanted. I would never go so far as to call him a god or genius (as if these 2 were interchangeable? c'mon America!) however, I connect with Steve as a merchant. Apple products are some of the loveliest products out there in 2011, with a lot of love and thought put into them. One day Apple stores will disappear, the brand will disappear, the name and memory of Steve Jobs will disappear. Today, however, is a remarkable day. It is a remarkable day (and something I have never seen) when the home page of a multibillion dollar computer company puts the face of its bearded creator on its home page and gives him the props he deserves. And why? Because Apple knows that its products are really good and they're really good because of Jobs. People like Steve Jobs because of his effort. He put a lot of thought and hard work into the gismos that people would be using in his lifetime and let me tell you -- they are a dream to use. I can't relate to the people here who say that he has contributed to the the "zombie culture" of today. That culture resides on their sofas in my opinion, watching "Dancing With the Stars." Thanks to Jobs, on the contrary, I'm using i-phone maps to get to the 20 independently owned boutiques I researched on google maps when I visit NYC. Thanks to him I can take pictures on my i-phone of store owners and designers I meet while I'm here to share with my staff back home. Because of him, I can also capture their designs to consider buying, give them contact names, share restaurant addresses and hopefully help them out somehow in the brief sporadic moments that I have when I'm traveling to NYC. The people leaving messages and momentos aren't part of a creepy Apple cult! They are people who use Steve Job's beautiful technology everyday to connect and remember what matters to them now, before it disappears.
Thanks Jeremiah for that excellent Gawker post, Steve Jobs Was Not God
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