What the hype around Steve Jobs really says about us
Let me confess this right upfront: I have never been an avid user of Apple’s products. I briefly owned an iPod in the mid 2000s but when it fell into my toilet (true!) one day I didn't really miss it. So writing about Steve Jobs this week feels a little like an atheist writing an obituary for the pope. This said though, the remarkable expressions of sympathy for Steve Jobs’ untimely death wasn’t lost on me. They are extraordinary in number ( 2.5m tweets in the first 13 hours), source (e.g. Obama) and nature . It all reminds me a little of what happened when Princess Diana or JFK died, I guess. The question here of course is: what is it that causes millions of people to respond so emotionally and affectionately to the death of this business tycoon? It is obvious that most of the usual features of these icons of popular culture do not really apply to Jobs. He was hardly a charismatic business leader with big PR value such as Richard Branson (Virgin) or Jack Welch (GE). In fact,...