Steve Jobs

I always found Steve Jobs interesting but in a very superficial, surface level way. In the way that he was the face of Apple and that I liked the pretty white laptop when I was 17 and wouldn't dare own one of the ugly grey or black ones.

I have been reading Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs' life recently and it has been very eye opening to me. So far my biggest reflections have been on the design elements that 99% of the population will probably never notice or consider, the passion and intensity with which Steve Jobs lived both in regard to his life and his work, and the overwhelming effect he had on the way I am interacting with technology at this very moment. And the way that I will interact with another piece of technology in about 2 minutes when I pick up my iPhone.

One of my favorite this about Jobs is that we had the ability/delusion to somewhat bend reality to inspire others to do things in an expedited manner, or do do these they may have never though possible in the first place.

I am writing this post from my 2007 MacBook that was purchased for me as a gift to go to university. At that point I took so much for granted. One that I should just be given a laptop for college, especially one of the higher priced machines that I really knew nothing about. I took for granted the progression of technology and time itself.

The machine that I am typing on now feels especially locked in the times of my 17th-22nd years of life. It stayed largely unused the first months that I owned it as my family did not have a wireless router. This was the first laptop in the house and as it was for my use in college there was no real need to get a router for me to do exactly what I could on our desktop.

This machine holds all of the photo booth selfies of me sitting in my room of my parent's house and in the background the progression of murals that I used to paint on my walls. My high school resume and copies of the essays I wrote to apply for college. There are pictures from senior year of high school, prom, freshman orientation, the first parties it went to at UT, everything. Everything from those beautiful formative years that I was "out on my own" physically, but not in regard to monetary own-ness. There are the pictures from my ventures abroad, quotes spilled onto sticky notes that inspired or encouraged me at whatever time I found them perusing the internet. The hundreds of pictures I downloaded of all kinds of places and things that I wanted to one day visit or recreate in some way.

For the past two years I have predominantly used a Lenovo T210. It is black and rigid and probably the biggest metaphor that I can come up with in opposition of the MacBook of the my younger, simple, carefree life. The Lenovo introduced a certain level of structure and stipulation of "life" from the man, Mr. Corporate America himself. I obviously still have my Mac, and to continue the metaphor, have not lost that "MacBook" side of my life, but in reality it is the Lenovo I use everyday, and the Macbook that I charge maybe once a month to use for fun.

Something has stirred in me as I continue to read jobs biography. It is symbolically the need to keep this  Macbook around. Not not every fully succumb to to the Lenovos of the world. To push the limits of what you think is possible. To pursue knowledge, to pursue yourself, to find my guru. To not fall back or depend on a secure corporate job if that is not where my passions lie, or to find a balance between, passion, productivity and stability.

The literal need, just as Jobs saw in an add in a magazine and spoke at his Standford Commencement speech, to "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."