A reader offers a reflection about Steve Jobs

There are too many premature obits today of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Computer.  After all, as the Wall Street Journal points out, “Mr. Jobs, while seriously ill, is very much alive.”  Clearly, though, it doesn’t look good for him at the moment.  Meanwhile, we might take this opportunity reflect on Jobs’ wonderfully serendipitous (one might suggest “providential”) career path, as he described it memorably in his famous “Stay Hungry” valedictory address at Stanford University back in 2005.   We might begin by considering how, as others have noted in the past, one of America’s great tech visionaries is also a wonderful pro-life story.

From his Wikipedia entry:

“Jobs was born in San Francisco, California and was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs (née Hagopian) of Mountain View, California, … Jobs’ biological parents – Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian graduate student who later became a political science professor, and Joanne Simpson (née Schieble), an American graduate student who went on to become a speech language pathologist – later married, giving birth to and raising Jobs’ biological sister, the novelist Mona Simpson.”

Jobs tells his own story this way in his Stanford speech:

“My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: ‘We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?’ They said: ‘Of course.’ My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.”  

Of course, abortion was not legal and easily available when Jobs was born back in 1955, although a pregnant college student probably could have found an illegal abortionist if she was desperate enough.   Obviously, Jobs’ mother chose life for her son, and we are all thankful for it.   

After high school, Jobs dutifully fulfilled his birth mother’s desire that he go to college — and was bored stiff.   Concerned about the high tuition bills for his working-class parents, Jobs dropped out.  This freed him to audit courses that really interested him — including calligraphy, which is why the Mac put so much emphasis on type design.

Jobs is notoriously protective of his private life and reticent about his personal opinions on subjects unrelated to technology, including his own views on abortion and other sensitive social issues.  It was troubling that Apple last year bowed to pressure from gay rights and pro-choice activists to censor the pro-life “Manhattan Declaration” app for iPhone and iPad.   The National Organization for Marriage responded with a clever takeoff of the famous Mac “1984” commercial, comparing Jobs to Big Brother.  

Fair enough.  On the other hand, Jobs has also blocked pornographic apps on the iPhone and iPad, calling it “freedom from porn” and telling one complainant: “You might care more about porn when you have kids.”  In another message exchange, he said Apple felt it had a “moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone.”

Apple’s Safari is equipped with the strongest parental control feature of any web browser; moreover, the iPad and iPhone both are ingeniously designed in ways that make it easy for the “administrator” (the person with the security code) to control access to browsers or apps — thus making it possible for many parents to share access to these devices with their children.   From what we know about Jobs’ central role in all of Apple’s software and hardware design, he almost certainly has had something to do with this.

Given his Silicon Valley roots, it would seem likely that Jobs leans left-libertarian politically, with all that implies.   As for religion, he plays it very close to the vest.  His 2005 Stanford speech, delivered not long after he learned he was in remission from a dire diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, stares death in the face:

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

To be sure, these weren’t exactly the words of a Christian believer.  However, the tone and thrust of his speech was also far from nihilistic.  (I think the reference to “dogma” is not meant in a religious sense, but probably translates as “conventional wisdom.”)  More than anything, the Jobs worldview, as enunciated at Stanford, is a joyful embrace of life and of the opportunities it offers for renewed creativity, each and every day.  This is a guy who wakes up every morning thankful to be alive.   His infectious enthusiasm undoubtedly has played a major role in the success of Apple.  

To be sure, like his fellow college dropout, Bill Gates, Jobs also is said to be exceptionally tough to work for.  At their worst, like many driven and hyper-smart individuals, both are said to have a gift for snark and sarcasm.  But Jobs comes off as a more appealing personality than the starchier Gates.

Apple users have been compared to a cult, and our culture’s slavish worship of technology in general verges on idolatry to a troubling degree.   Jobs has benefitted from this syndrome, and fed it in his own way.  At his best, however, he has been careful not to exalt technology for its own sake, but for what it can do to bring people together.

Let’s keep Steve Jobs in our prayers, shall we?  May he be given the grace of recovery.  And when he arrives at that “destination we all share,” may he exult in the presence of his Creator.

A man facing his death is always to be pitied. It reduces the richest man to absolute poverty. Grant Steve Jobs, made in your image and likeness, the grace to receive your grace in Christ Jesus and come to eternal light and peace through Christ our Lord. Mother Mary, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.