True story. This morning I realized there were several things going on this week that could be considered as a natural progression leading me toward this very blog post. This might seem a bit abstract, so stay with me. Here’s the chronology:
1. Sunday:
I’ve been browsing for a new laptop. In doing so I’ve been spending a considerable amount of time daydreaming about my desperate need for technology upgrades and ogling the products at apple.com, one of my top five favorite enterprise ecommerce sites.
2. Monday:
I find Benjamin Franklin to be one of the most compelling and intriguing figures in American history. I pulled his biography off my bookshelf, spent about 30 minutes thumbing through the pages and considered reading it again.
3. Tuesday:
I spent several minutes, perhaps even five, considering whether or not I should renew my subscription to Time Magazine. To help me decide what to do I visited their website to peruse the content. This is where things start to come together.
Because I spent more time at Time.com than I had planned, I happened to stumble upon an early profile of Steve Jobs that was written back in 1983. It’s a colorful exploration of a rising star in a fledgling industry, and in interesting perspective on a man who pioneered a cult following and grew it into one of the most powerful and innovative brands in the world. It’s an interesting read.
Shortly after my two hour stint reading old news clips I came across a recent article that noted a new biography about Jobs is slated to hit bookshelves (physical and virtual) in early 2012. Ready for the real kicker here? The author of the upcoming book, “iSteve: The Book of Jobs” is Walter Isaacson, the same man who wrote the biography about Benjamin Franklin. Now I’m getting a bit freaked out. Is there hidden meaning behind this uncanny coincidence? Perhaps it’s my destiny to read the book in order to discover that Steve Jobs is actually my new American hero. Or maybe I’m just playing connect the dots, only to find out later the lines don’t really amount to much of anything.
OK, so maybe the correlations aren’t all that interesting, but I thought it was a weird series of events.
Anyway, love him or hate him, when it comes to technology executives Steve Jobs is something of a living legend who’s inscrutable ability to connect with a youthful audience has helped define technology and advance ecommerce. As the author of nearly 30 year old Time Magazine profile so presciently puts it:
“If Jobs is deft at dealing with his peers and elders in commerce, a comforting combination of overnight plutocrat and shill for a new gold rush, he is positively hypnotic when he takes the computer gospel to the young.”
I guess it’s true what they say, the more things change the more they stay the same.
—Jared—
Jared Matkin is a staff writer for HotWax Media with a background in PR, Branding and Marketing. He’s also a light-hearted and an opinionated character who will join other HotWax Media employees and advisers in periodically posting his thoughts on topics ranging from enterprise eCommerce to business and technology.
