Comparing Steve Jobs’ death to starving African children is messed up
It has been 10 days since we lost one of the most amazing inventors and entrepreneurs of our times. Not long after that, some independent music DJ from Florida (or New York, I’m not really sure) took advantage of the momentum to make an emotional statement about our society to advertise himself.
He published on his Facebook profile a picture of Steve Jobs side by side to another photo of starving African children quoting “1 Person Dies, And 100 Million Cries - 11 Million Die, And No One Cries,” and a link to his Twitter account. Obviously, he went viral. The unknown artist got 27K likes, 25K shares and 7.5K comments in less than three days.
It proves that people would get emotional and supportive when you’re making a statement about how unjust is the world, regardless if it makes sense or not, or being properly fact-checked. Honestly, my first reaction to this message was “You got to be kidding me!”. Seriously, what Steve Jobs’ death has to do with the hunger in Africa!? Why are we comparing oranges with apples? And most importantly, are we stupid enough to think this is a clever comparison?
We lost the Thomas Edison of our generation and he deserves the recognition he is getting. I couldn’t agree more with Nicholson Baker’s article at The New Yorker (October 17th 2011 issue) that says Jobs “died absolutely the king of the world of talking to people who aren’t in the same room with you and of book reading when you don’t have a real book and of movie editing and of e-mail and of music distribution—the king of the world of making good things flow better. You have to love him.”
The guy was a genius in innovation, technology, and especially in branding. At the same issue of The New Yorker, James Surowiecki analyzed “there is no doubt that Apple’s success in the past decade depended on Jobs’ uncanny ability to introduce products that captured the zeitgeist. But what turned Apple into the most valuable company on the planet was that Jobs did more than just create cool new devices. Rather, he presided over the creation of new market ecosystems, will those devices at their heart.”
I’ve been directly active in humanitarian activities and projects through the United Nations Association of the Dominican Republic. My personal opinion is that those who share the idea of Steve Jobs not deserving the cry of “100 million people,” should perhaps invest more time making a difference in the world and less time hiding behind their screens (and, ironically, I bet a good number of them have been designed by Steve Jobs).
