s*********5
发帖数: 5637 | 1 这个标题说明很有趣呀。
Steve Jobs turned Eve's apple, the symbol of fallen humankind, into a
religious icon for true believers in technology. But can salvation be
downloaded?
乔布斯去世后很多人都觉得自己好像有一个好朋友去世了，连儿子的老师也很难过地和学生分享这件事。谨以此文纪念一下他吧。
--------------
Steve Jobs: The Secular Prophet
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020347680457661540
Steve Jobs turned Eve's apple, the symbol of fallen humankind, into a
religious icon for true believers in technology. But can salvation be
downloaded?.
By ANDY CROUCH
For every magical thing Steve Jobs revealed in his Apple keynote addresses,
there were many other things he concealed. Like the devices he created, his
life was more and more opaque even while becoming more and more celebrated.
So his death this week came as a shock for nearly all of us, even though we
knew that only grave illness could be keeping him from the company he co-
founded and loved. He told us almost nothing about his prognosis—right
through his last public appearance he was as turtleneck-clad and upbeat as
ever. But suddenly, this week, he was gone.
Steve Jobs was extraordinary in countless ways—as a designer, an innovator,
a (demanding and occasionally ruthless) leader. But his most singular
quality was his ability to articulate a perfectly secular form of hope.
Nothing exemplifies that ability more than Apple's early logo, which slapped
a rainbow on the very archetype of human fallenness and failure—the bitten
fruit—and turned it into a sign of promise and progress.
That bitten apple was just one of Steve Jobs's many touches of genius,
capturing the promise of technology in a single glance. The philosopher
Albert Borgmann has observed that technology promises to relieve us of the
burden of being merely human, of being finite creatures in a harsh and
unyielding world. The biblical story of the Fall pronounced a curse upon
human work—"cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of
it all the days of thy life." All technology implicitly promises to reverse
the curse, easing the burden of creaturely existence. And technology is most
celebrated when it is most invisible—when the machinery is completely
hidden, combining godlike effortlessness with blissful ignorance about the
mechanisms that deliver our disburdened lives.
Brett Arends discusses on Lunch Break why he believes Steve Jobs was the
best chief executive of his generation and wasn't just a technology genius
but also a hype master.
.
No company combined simplicity and hiddenness better than Apple under Mr.
Jobs's leadership. Apple made technology not for geeks but for cool people—
and ordinary people. It made products that worked, beautifully, without fuss
and with great style. They improved markedly, unmistakably, from one
generation to the next—not in the way geeks wanted technology to improve,
with ever longer lists of features (I'm looking at you, Microsoft Word) and
technical specifications, but in simplicity. Press the single button on the
face of the iPad and, whether you are 5 or 95, you can begin using it with
almost no instruction. It has no manual. You cannot open it up to see its
inner workings even if you want to. No geeks required—or allowed. The iPad
offers its blessings to ordinary mortals.
And so it came to pass that in the 2000s, when much about the wider world
was causing Americans intense anxiety and frustration, the one thing that
got inarguably better, much better, was our personal technology.
In October 2001, with the ruins of the World Trade Center still smoldering
and the Internet financial bubble burst, Apple introduced the iPod. In
January 2010, in the depths of the Great Recession, the very month when
unemployment breached 10% for the first time in a generation, Apple
introduced the iPad.
Politically, militarily, economically, the decade was defined by
disappointment after disappointment—but technologically, it was defined by
a series of elegantly produced events in which Steve Jobs, commanding more
attention and publicity each time, strode on stage with a miracle in his
pocket.
Steve Jobs was the evangelist of this particular kind of progress—and he
was the perfect evangelist because he had no competing source of hope. He
believed so sincerely in the "magical, revolutionary" promise of Apple
precisely because he believed in no higher power. In his celebrated Stanford
commencement address (which is itself an elegant, excellent model of the
genre), he spoke frankly about his initial cancer diagnosis in 2003. It's
worth pondering what Jobs did, and didn't, say:
"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's 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's 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, heart and intuition. They
somehow already know what you truly want to become."
This is the gospel of a secular age. It has the great virtue of being based
only on what we can all perceive—it requires neither revelation nor dogma.
And it promises nothing it cannot deliver—since all that is promised is the
opportunity to live your own unique life, a hope that is manifestly
realizable since it is offered by one who has so spectacularly succeeded by
following his own "inner voice, heart and intuition."
Mr. Jobs was by no means the first person to articulate this vision of a
meaningful life—Socrates, the Buddha and Emerson come to mind. To be sure,
fully embracing this secular gospel requires an austerity of spirit that few
have been able to muster, even if it sounds quite fine on the lawn of
Stanford University.
Upon close inspection, this gospel offers no hope that you cannot generate
yourself and only the comfort of having been true to yourself. In the face
of tragedy and evil—the kind of tragedy that cuts off lives not just at 56
years old but at 5 or 6, the kind of evil bent on eradicating whole tribes
and nations from the earth—it is strangely inert.
Perhaps every human system of meaning fails or at least falls silent in the
face of these harsh realities, but the gospel of self-fulfillment does
require an extra helping of stability and privilege to be plausible. Death
is "life's change agent"? For most human beings, that would sound like cold
comfort indeed.
But the genius of Steve Jobs was to persuade us, at least for a little while
, that cold comfort is enough. The world—at least the part of the world in
our laptop bags and our pockets, the devices that display our unique lives
to others and reflect them to ourselves—will get better. This is the sense
in which the tired old cliché of "the Apple faithful" and the "cult of the
Mac" is true. It is a religion of hope in a hopeless world, hope that your
ordinary and mortal life can be elegant and meaningful, even if it will soon
be dated, dusty and discarded like a 2001 iPod.
It is said that human beings can live for 40 days without food, four days
without water and four minutes without air. But we cannot live for four
seconds without hope.
It's probably true for nations as well.
Mr. Jobs's final leave of absence was announced this year on Martin Luther
King Jr. Day. And, as it happened, Mr. Jobs died on the same day as one of
Dr. King's companions, the Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth, one of the last
living co-founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Dr. King, too, had had a close encounter with his own mortality when he was
stabbed by a mentally ill woman at a book signing in 1958. He told that
story a decade later to a rally on the night of April 3, 1968, and then
turned, with unsettling foresight, to the possibility of his own early death
. His words, at the beginning, could easily have been a part of Steve Jobs's
commencement address:
"Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place.
But I'm not concerned about that now."
But here Dr. King, the civic and religious leader, turned a corner that Mr.
Jobs never did. "I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up
to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I
may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a
people, will get to the promised land! And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not
worried about anything, I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the
glory of the coming of the Lord!"
Is it possible to live a good, full, human life without that kind of hope?
Steve Jobs would have said yes in a heartbeat. A convert to Zen Buddhism, he
was convinced as anyone could be that this life is all there is. He hoped
to put a "ding in the universe" by his own genius and vision in this life
alone—and who can deny that he did?
But the rest of us, as grateful as we are for his legacy, still have to
decide whether technology's promise is enough to take us to the promised
land. Is technology enough? Has the curse truly been repealed? Is the
troublesome world simply awaiting another Steve Jobs, the evangelist of our
power to unfold our own possibilities?
And, correspondingly, was the hope beyond themselves, and beyond this life,
that animated Dr. King and his companions merely superfluous to the success
of their cause, an accident of religious history rather than a civic
necessity?
For people of a secular age, Steve Jobs's gospel may seem like all the good
news we need. But people of another age would have considered it a set of
beautifully polished empty promises, notwithstanding all its magical results
. Indeed, they would have been suspicious of it precisely because of its
magical results.
And that may be true of a future age as well. Our grandchildren may discover
that technological progress, for all its gifts, is the exception rather
than the rule. It works wonders within its own walled garden, but it falters
when confronted with the worst of the world and the worst in ourselves.
Indeed, it may be that rather than concealing difficulty and relieving
burdens, the only way forward in the most tenacious human troubles is to
embrace difficulty and take up burdens—in Dr. King's words, to embrace a "
dangerous unselfishness."
Whatever the limits of Steve Jobs's secular gospel, or for that matter of Dr
. King's Christian one, our keen sense of loss at his passing reminds us
that the oxygen of human societies is hope. Steve Jobs kept hope alive. We
will not soon see his like again. Let us hope that when we do, it is soon
enough to help us deal with the troubles that this century, and every
century, will bring.
—Mr. Crouch is the author of "Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative
Calling" and an editor-at-large at Christianity Today. | s*********5
发帖数: 5637 | 2 这是他关于生死的那段名言，也是现在被引用最多的那段话，英文原文楼上可以找到。愿大家都能听到自己内心和直觉的召唤。。
“没有谁想死。甚至想去天堂的人也不想为了去天堂而死。但死亡是我们所有人的目的
地，没有谁跑掉过。本来也应该是这样，因为“死”很有可能就是“生”的最佳发明。
它是“生”的变革促进者。它把旧的清理掉，为新的让路。眼下你是新的，但不久过后
的某一天，你慢慢地就成了旧的，被清理掉了。很遗憾变化是如此剧烈，但这相当真实。
“你的时间是有限的，所以不要把它浪费在走别人的人生道路上面。不要受教条羁绊，
那是在用别人的思考成果活着。不要让他人意见的噪音淹没你内心深处的声音。最重要
的是，要有勇气听从内心和直觉的召唤。它们或多或少已经知道你真正想成为一个什么
样的人。其他一切都是次要的。”
[2005年6月在斯坦福大学(Stanford)毕业典礼上的演讲]
演讲全文这里可以找到：http://www.rubik.com.cn/steve_jobs.htm#chinese | l**d
发帖数: 608 | 3 第二段太偏激了吧...用在名校的毕业典礼上去鼓励有一定能力的年青人去创新无可厚
非, 但不宜不分对象的过分宣传, 因为大多数普通老百姓确确实实是"走在别人的人生
道路上面".
。愿大家都能听到自己内心和直觉的召唤。。
实。
【在 s*********5 的大作中提到】
: 这是他关于生死的那段名言，也是现在被引用最多的那段话，英文原文楼上可以找到。愿大家都能听到自己内心和直觉的召唤。。
: “没有谁想死。甚至想去天堂的人也不想为了去天堂而死。但死亡是我们所有人的目的
: 地，没有谁跑掉过。本来也应该是这样，因为“死”很有可能就是“生”的最佳发明。
: 它是“生”的变革促进者。它把旧的清理掉，为新的让路。眼下你是新的，但不久过后
: 的某一天，你慢慢地就成了旧的，被清理掉了。很遗憾变化是如此剧烈，但这相当真实。
: “你的时间是有限的，所以不要把它浪费在走别人的人生道路上面。不要受教条羁绊，
: 那是在用别人的思考成果活着。不要让他人意见的噪音淹没你内心深处的声音。最重要
: 的是，要有勇气听从内心和直觉的召唤。它们或多或少已经知道你真正想成为一个什么
: 样的人。其他一切都是次要的。”
: [2005年6月在斯坦福大学(Stanford)毕业典礼上的演讲]
| i*s
发帖数: 446 | 4 岂止是好象死了好朋友，简直就是如丧考妣——有网友指出应该去掉“如”字。
和学生分享这件事。谨以此文纪念一下他吧。
【在 s*********5 的大作中提到】
: 这个标题说明很有趣呀。
: Steve Jobs turned Eve's apple, the symbol of fallen humankind, into a
: religious icon for true believers in technology. But can salvation be
: downloaded?
: 乔布斯去世后很多人都觉得自己好像有一个好朋友去世了，连儿子的老师也很难过地和学生分享这件事。谨以此文纪念一下他吧。
: --------------
: Steve Jobs: The Secular Prophet
: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020347680457661540
: Steve Jobs turned Eve's apple, the symbol of fallen humankind, into a
: religious icon for true believers in technology. But can salvation be
| s*********5
发帖数: 5637 | 5 今天听到有人讲到对人类影响最大的三个苹果：
1.夏娃的苹果
2.掉到牛顿头上的苹果
3.Steve的苹果 |
|
