Jobs is Survived By His Machines

By ROB PATTERSON

Few men have changed our modern world as powerfully as Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Inc. and for much of its 44 years the company’s leading executive. He was instrumental in the development of the personal computer and guided its products like the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone and more as well as the development of the Pixar animation system from conception into the marketplace. He’s one of those rare figures to whom the oft-overused term “genius” applies and a genuine cultural icon and visionary.

Jobs has been the subject of two feature film biopics: the quite well-done “Steve Jobs” (2015) and less cinematically successful “Jobs” (2013). But the best movie about him is the documentary “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine,” which came out in 2015 and I only recently watched. I would urge anyone even remotely interested in computers as well as the times we live in to also do so. It’s that good and so relevant to how we now live in the modern world.

It’s directed by Alex Gibney, who has become today’s preeminent cinematic documentarian, thanks to his films about Scientology, Enron, Wikileaks, Eliot Spitzer and other topics. He manages to capture the essence of highly complex, contradictory and at times confounding yet also fascinating human.

The movie is bookended at its start and end by the international outpouring of sentiment that followed Jobs’s passing in 2011 at the age of 58, noting how so many people felt a profound bond with the man due to his Apple technological advances. His bonds with those who knew him were far more complicated.

“The Man in the Machine” is an apt subtitle to the film, as it reflects how Jobs felt about the computers and other devices he ushered into existence and their relationship with users and Jobs himself. And conversely how many of those users felt so connected with Jobs, thanks to his inventions and innovations.

Yet as a man he stood apart from just about everyone around him. That’s a characteristic found in bold relief in his relationship with his oldest child, Lisa, born to Jobs’s longtime lover of his late teen and young adult years. He neglected her and even for a time denied paternity. Yet he named an early Apple computer Lisa after her.

He followed Zen Buddhism, but eschewed personal and corporate philanthropy, even though he became one of the richest men on the planet. He was pushed out of the company he founded in 1985, in part due to its unconventional and less than efficient structure. Yet when he returned to a faltering Apple some 12 years later he was able to lead it to new heights of success and innovation.

Jobs was a demanding and autocratic boss, yet much of the Apple workforce was in awe of him. He could sometimes be a real self-centered jerk, as demonstrated by his habit of parking in handicapped spaces.

But even for all that, the people who knew him well – or as well as anyone could – and worked closely with Jobs that speak about him in the film in one way or another show some form of high regard for the man. He was indeed a rare quantity, and one whose impact is undeniable and almost incalculable.

Gibney tells Jobs’s life story in a way that is consistently fascinating. And even if in the end one can’t quite grasp the full why behind how Jobs conducted himself as he did, as well as the secrets, if any, behind his visionary achievements. That’s no failing on the part of the filmmaker, as one comes away from the film undeniably impressed with the man and feeling that bond also felt by many millions of others.

Populist Picks

Documentary Film: “The Mayo Clinic” – Today’s other preeminent cinematic documentarian Ken Burns produced and co-directed this excellent two-hour look at how the famed medical center came into being up through its operations today. And in the process reflects on and offers a high standard for the way that medicine is practiced in America today.

Documentary Film: “Coney Island” – This acclaimed 1991 PBS “American Experience” episode traces the fascinating history of what was in its time America’s most famed amusement attraction from the discovery of the locale by Henry Hudson through its heyday into its sad demise.

Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email orca@prismnet.com.

From The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2019

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