Steve

October 6, 2011Adrienne Rice Adams Leave a comment

I’m surprised at the depth of my grief.

I came late to the Apple party – my first Apple product was the 1st gen Windows iPod, a gift from my sister. Years later I started making websites and needed a Mac “for testing.” My black MacBook sits next to me right now. I finally replaced my PC last spring with an iMac, after years of wondering could it really be that different?

Different, yes. It took me a while to get it, skeptic that I am. But like many converts, I am now a true believer. (Two more iPods and an iPad have filled out my Apple family.) But what is that I believe in? Is it just a cult of personality, and now that Steve is gone my belief will fade? I don’t think that’s it.

What Steve Jobs did for the planet will be sorted out over the next few centuries. Last night over dinner, as I broke down and wept for the eleventh time, my husband Steve said that to him Steve Jobs was our generation’s Benjamin Franklin. (My) Steve described Franklin’s curiosity.

Curiosity. The word fit, and perhaps that’s what I admire most about Jobs, and what he has wrought. Steve was insatiably curious. Don’t settle for repeating what everyone else has done. Think different.

Some days I think that all the words have been written, all the paintings painted, all the notes played. No more. If Steve Jobs has taught me anything, and I think he has, is that there is always a way forward.

“Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
—Steve Jobs, Stanford University commencement speech, June 2005.

Liberty

October 1, 2011Adrienne Rice Adams 1 Comment

Liberty is freedom from control. Liberty Plaza in NYC is one of the platforms for the expression of liberty. There are many more. As of today, the Occupation is morphing into a greater gathering of citizens. Something is not right in America, and people are taking to the streets to talk about it.

Once upon a time some people explored a tool called the World Wide Web and saw that it had great potential to liberate humankind. Other people saw the Web and saw they could use it to make money. They realized that people hunger for connections, and would willingly expose big chunks of their private lives. Now a few people are making billions by selling the private lives and thoughts and creative output of others. The distinction between public and private liberty has been erased – our private lives are made available to government and private enterprise at a level never before imagined.

I use Facebook, I use Google. I use the internet and know that I have ceded some part of my liberty to Google and Facebook; I have ceded part of my liberty to my ISP, and to my local law enforcement agencies – if they so choose to exercise their rights.

Is it time to push back? I think it is. Like the protesters occupying Wall Street, we who use the internet can start to expose what’s wrong. We can declare that our private lives are ours alone, and refuse to let others profit from them. We can declare the right to own our “content.” The internet is the most powerful tool ever invented for the furtherance of liberty. It does not belong to the corporations that own the pipes; it does not belong to the advertisers; it does not belong to the social media moguls; it does not belong to any government; it belongs to us.