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On August 29th, 2011, the New York Times published an article by Andrew Ross Sorkin, which tentatively points out that Steve Jobs, billionaire, is not much given to public charity. If Jobs wants to shun donations to charitable organizations on a personal and professional level, that's his business, and I'm not interested in judging that behavior. Here is the link to the original article:
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/the-mystery-of-steve-jobss-public-giving/ However, Sorkin proclaims at the onset of the article that Steve Jobs is a genius. Genius is a word too often ascribed to individuals based on our admiration of them, instead of being based on empirical evidence. Empirical evidence being the ability to do extraordinary mental feats, often with no preparation or extended time to perform them. There actually are people on this planet who can, for example, perform mathematical magic like the main character in the movie "Good Will Hunting." These are the true geniuses in the world. They are people like Steve Wozniak, who conceived, designed and built the first Apple computer. This was an exceptional accomplishment, especially at the time in history that he did it. Steve Wozniak is a genius. Steve Jobs is not. Jobs has many admirers. I may have counted myself among them, had I been born earlier, and also if I had remained ignorant of the horrible way he's treated people, including his own daughter in her formative years, and his own loyal employees. Sure, you can point out that geniuses aren't always nice people. That's beside the point. Here are some honest ways to summarize Jobs's different hats: Technological innovator (of electronic crack), hippie generation demagogue, and intrepid salesman (master manipulator of the cash cows known as Apple customers). He has, through the cult of personality, brought Apple back from the brink of disaster and generated much revenue for the company and himself. These are impressive accomplishments, but they don't necessarily qualify for the title genius. A mistaken idea that has trickled down from the one percent of the wealthy to the person-on-the-street is: if you get paid more, you're smarter. If you've achieved considerable material success in the world, you are regaled with all sorts of knee-jerk descriptions, such as genius, visionary, brilliant, etc. Certainly, it takes more than a 75 I.Q. to amass great wealth. But seriously... is it sheer intelligence that is required, or the cunning of a sociopath? I see Jobs as he is: a clever human being who, by one part vision, one part serendipity and one part opportunism, managed to carve himself a place in the history of computing. His part was significant, but hardly worthy of the title genius. If you look in the dictionary for the word 'genius,' you will see a picture of Linus Torvalds or John Carmack before you will ever see Steve Jobs. |