God's Girls
Almost done the Steve Jobs biography. I don't feel that enthralled by the book, or by the person. Though I'm truly glad that I'm reading it.
Imputing as little condescension as I can here, I feel like I recognize a big part of Steve Jobs, and his personality. His strength really wasn't his sense of advertising, or his engineering. Fundamentally, It was his awareness of design and his sense of perfection. He seemed to have had the ability to really focus on what design was, what the essence of things was. And it makes him amazing at designing user experiences (he apparently had a lab at Apple where products were laid out to be tested physically... to just pick up all kinds of prototype designs, play with them, push buttons, feel the weight, etc.)
It also made it very difficult sometimes to be pragmatic (like how he refused to put in fans in the old Apple I's and II's) but just as importantly, it led him to chronic bouts of seclusion, introversion and indecision when he was confronted with difficult situations, or ones that were simply impossible to simplify. It's why his first mansion stayed without furniture (I can relate.) It's why the idea of a uniform appealed to him (as it does to me!)
The prevailing opinion seems to be that this was the result of his disdain for materialism (a hold-over from his time studying Buddhism), and his need for recognition. I'm not too sure where I fit into this picture, though I do feel the seductive call of simplicity and anti-materialism. I'm not too sure what it is exactly that is added to this to create the same general disposition.
Things might get a bit more specious from here, but I think it might be a certain brand obsessiveness more than recognition. I recognize his love of details (focusing on the grooves of his products, the configuration of circuit boards, etc.) as well as the callousness that comes from his focusing on some things and not on others... I can understand why he is not known for his philanthropy, and why it was relatively easy (?) to not spend a lot of time thinking about the daughter he abandoned for years... It's not hatred or anything active, it's a semi-deliberate regression from thinking about something.
He also posesses a certain kind of optimism that is a dangerous mix with his obsessiveness (I think I share a similar combination here.) Because it makes one persuasive (c.f. Reality Distortion Field), but it also means that one takes longer to learn from past mistakes, since these are not given much thought or credence.