Buggs Bunny promised me a future that never materialized; a future with flying cars and rocket boots and Illudium Pu-36 explosive space modulators. As 2000 approached, it became clear that the world I thought I'd live in as a child would never come to pass.

Instead, I live in some brilliant alternate future, built in no small part in the image Steve Jobs' personal vision of simple, accessible, beautiful computing for the masses. It's a future with tiny devices that entertain, communicate with anyone in the world, and grant near instant and ubiquitous access to the sum total of human knowledge. He's built our sufficiently advanced technology, indistinguishable by prior generations from magic, that allows us after some reflection to realize we're finally here, in the future. Isn't it lovely?

I don't have any personal emotional connection with Apple products or with Steve Jobs and his reputation as an inspirational figure. I never felt comfortable with the zealous reverence paid to Jobs, or the personality cult that grew up around him. Regardless, I feel an undeniable melancholy at his passing, that it's shut the door on a great era of invention and technological progress, whose heirs have yet to arrive to steer the ship still further forwards.

Oct 6 2011