More on Steve Jobs

http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2011/10/more-on-steve-jobs

Steve Jobs's life is an inspiring college-dropout, son-of-immigrant success story of America and capitalism, as highlighted here earlier. But it's also a reminder to cultural conservatives that the 1960s and 1970s weren't 100% bad.

Jobs, according to this Fortune article, has called his LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life." Apple ads featured a long-haired, cross-legged John Lennon and the slogan "think different."

IBM is a fine company, too, and there are plenty of creative individuals who work there despite the history or culture of of white shirt, blue-suit conformity. Some LSD users are losers, burnouts, or addicts rather than billionaire visionary entrepreneurs. And, granted, there may be some contradictions in a secretive, giant company selling billions of products that offer a closed-source, highly controlled user experience while touting its countercultural, "think different" approach.

But even with all those cautions and caveats, John Markoff was onto something in his book What the Doormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry. One of the things that was great about Jobs is that in the end he expressed his individual creativity not by dropping out of business or capitalism but by acting through it.

by Editor  |  Oct 6, 2011 at 9:14 am receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free futureofcapitalism.com mailing list