Living life before you die! is a way to know Steve Jobs!!
By Satish Jha
When I first heard of Jobs and Gates in the same breath, they were on the cover page of TIME and I was a teenager, just a couple of years shy of them.
My brother, who loved design and was IIT Delhi was a great fan of both, a little partial to Jobs though. (He went on to create HP's PalmTop LX95, helped innovate in design wherever he went, gave the black colour to laptops and later co-founded Corvis, a networking pioneer that had a $30 Billion IPO in the late 1990s).
For a student of science and policy, the gap between Jobs and Gates and the rest of us in India at the time, the late 70s, defined the between the leading edge of the world and India. (In announcing a $35 or now a $50 laptop today, the Government of India just underlined that the gap remains, just a few generations apart!)
Steve was born and grew up as poor as one gets in America and passed away as the most regarded innovator of the century!
He exhorted the next generation not to live someone else's life, do what they love regardless of how poor they are and they can have a hope to change the world.
Steve also influenced the making of One Laptop per Child. Yves Behar, OLPC's designer who is again an exceptional global designer, was hugely influenced by Jobs. Negroponte and Jobs go back more than 30 years ago and Jobs supported MIT Media Lab with half a million dollars when he was barely 30 years old.
Just before dying, he made his company the MOST VALUABLE company in the world and the one with the largest cash reserve of more than $100 Billion as well. And when I saw the announcement of iPhone 4GS yesterday, it was much of what I had hoped a phone to do while doing my MBA in 1990!
Thank you Steve for making billions of lives see what they would not have seen without you, at least not when they did and you will continue to inspire people all over the world and, hopefully, some in the country I love so much as well. You were always a winner, in moving on as well you have billions more who are teary eyed and inspired.
Pray, India's leaders learn the right lessons from a pioneer of the century!
Satish Jha
