Life is like a box of chocolates, or is it? A box of chocolates is a pretty linear thing. Sure, you can vary the order of eating your precious sweets, but the direction and content of the box won’t change depending on what route you take. Life is not like that.
This came to mind when I revisited Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement address. Jobs talks for example about how beautiful type on the computer may never have come along hadn’t it been for a calligraphy course he attended after dropping out from college back in the 70′s. Intuitively, I brushed that off as placing a slightly over estimated value on Steve’s own contribution to desktop publishing and computers in general, but then I hesitated. What WOULD have happened if this concept hadn’t been brought in at that time? Would it have come along later? Possibly. Much later? Probably. Would communications technology have looked different today? Certainly!
Looking back at this past pivotal decade of communications evolution, I really can’t say where we would have been without Steve Jobs. I’m sure we would have been somewhere completely different. We would not necessarily have evolved less – Steve may or may not have blocked out other talents – but the course of communications technology would have led us somewhere else, simply because of life’s un-chocolate-like properties.
This is really not a salute to Steve Jobs – the same thing can be said for thousands of doers over the course of history – but one thing is for certain: it can’t be said for the non-doers. And this, my friends and dear readers, is my new years message to you: go out and do something about your dreams and ideas. It’s the only way you’ll ever change the world and the course of history. Ideas in your head die with you. And if you don’t want to take it from me, take it from the man who, like it or not, never stopped giving us one more thing.
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