Steve Jobs Dies at 56

There are already many articles up in the media about computer visionary Steve Jobs who lost his battle to cancer yesterday. Suffice it to say, Jobs helped to revolutionize so many aspects of our lives with his never ending push to enhance technology and changed the way business and society works and interacts. He will be a continuing example of why thinking outside of the box and refusing to be satisfied with the status quo are a mind set that needs to be embraced rather than fled from merely because it disrupts one's comfort zone. Here are some brief excerpts from a Washington Post article:

Jobs died Wednesday at age 56 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer that his wasting form came to wear as familiarly as his preference for outdated jeans and black turtlenecks. When news of his death broke around 7:30 p.m. on the East Coast, a good number of us sought immediate solace (to say nothing of information) from our Apple stuff.

That is what Steve Jobs gave us: the future. A sense of ourselves moving forward into this century, which has proved especially hard to do, with its lack of employment opportunities and its addiction to panic. He gave us a look at the future and all the ambivalence and worry that comes with it. It was the most elegant form of social disruption, . .

Under his leadership, Apple’s subliminal selling point was: Let it go. Let go of the uneasiness about computers. Let go of ugly, antique technology. . . . . In 2011, so much of our culture — as well as our politics — feels as though we’re losing grip on the old, beloved things.

Jobs had been teaching us to say goodbye to all that for decades — we just didn’t know it. Some of us said goodbye to typewriters in the 1980s when we finished term papers using MacWrite on a Macintosh Plus for the first time. Some of us said goodbye when we made PTA fliers and “Lost Dog” posters that were far and away better than their Sharpie-scrawled predecessors. Let it go, let it go. . .

Letting go of the old is difficult for some (e.g., Christianists and Tea Party loons) but it's not something to fear. It's called progress.