Sam's Reviews > Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
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it was amazing

I cried twice. I started this book thinking that I would only read the first one hundred pages or so for class discussion, but it proved to be so engrossing that I spent every spare moment of the past few days reading it to learn about Jobs, a person I previously knew virtually nothing about. I am not sure why, but I feel embarrassed to admit how transformative learning about Jobs has been. I have always thought of myself as exclusively humanities and I previously misunderstood technology as always divorced from that realm; further, I believe that Western society has become excessively reliant on technology and that to dismantle capitalism (a necessary project) we have to distance ourselves from the culture of consumption that technology (and other commodity driven markets) thrives on. But learning about Jobs's philosophy of design and his insistence on always operating at the intersection of humanities and technology forced me to confront many of my misguided assumptions. Though his methods were sometimes flawed and I personally believe that it is never okay to belittle a person or their achievements, I found myself in awe of Jobs's passion for perfection and his unwillingness to compromise for the sake of his vision. It was oddly fun for me to read his own opinions on Bob Dylan, The Beatles, food, among other things. I found his commitment to Zen Buddhism and its effect on his design principles fascinating and compelling. Like all humans, he was fascinating, complex, imperfect, often wrong, and his ups and downs, full of drama, made for a great book. His final words in the last chapter of the book on making a legacy and building upon what our predecessors left us struck a chord with me, as I am sure it will for anyone who is even mildly interested in creating things. My read was made that much more poignant towards the end because I just had a conversation with my dad this week about iPads and how his life has been made so much easier because he has one. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like there are few people in this era who have impacted the way we live in Western society as much as Jobs has, and I respect and admire how determined he was to make more active creators of us all.
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Reading Progress

March 23, 2016 – Started Reading
March 23, 2016 – Shelved
March 25, 2016 –
page 345
54.76%
March 27, 2016 – Finished Reading

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