Part of my freshman orientation in college in 1994 was to learn about this newfangled thing called e-mail. There was nothing fancy about it. The screen had a distinct DOS-like feel to it. I don’t remember being inspired by it. I hadn’t even brought a computer with me to college.
The very next year, the Internet and email seemed to explode in popularity. My dad gave me his old computer, one with a hard drive of 100mb. It ran Windows 3.1. Later in my sophomore year, a professor volunteered to teach us html and help us design a webpage instead of completing a standard research paper.
By my senior year, the dorms all had an Ethernet connection.
A year after that, people began downloading music through a peer-sharing site called Napster.
Two years later, Steve Jobs introduced iTunes.
The Digital Age has been an amazing ride and Apple and Steve Jobs have been instrumental in both sparking the digital revolution and maintaining it. The first Apple computer was released in 1976, the year I was born. The first computer I remember being taught how to use was the Apple IIe when I was in third grade.
Twenty-five years ago, I took my first digital picture, using a camcorder hooked up (I believe) to one of those Apples. I believe the resolution was somewhere around 10 pixels per inch. Seriously, I still have the picture. I can count the pixels.
It's rather impressionistic.
Now I use a digital camera that boasts a resolution of 12 megapixels, with one megapixel being equal to 1,048,576 pixels.
Twenty years ago, I made mixtapes for my friends. Ten years ago, I made mix-cds. Now I don’t own a cd or a tape. Even my DVD collection is gathering dust. All my music and a majority of my videos now rest on a computer or an ipad or an ipod.
And I’m almost ashamed to say that it’s not just my DVDs gathering dust, my books are too.
Everything is digitized.
And Steve Jobs is primarily responsible for that.
Since his death a few days ago, Steve Jobs has been called the Thomas Edison of his generation. Only time will tell how he will be remembered. Only time will tell how his legacy will settle into our collective consciousness.
After his death this week, I read the text of Jobs’ speech to Stanford graduates in 2006. I was surprised that a man who had a reputation of being arrogant and controlling and not much of a people person, could come across as a humble and down to earth as he did in that speech.
Here, after all, was a man who was at the top of the world years ago, running one of the most successful businesses in the world, when he was fired as CEO. Instead of curling up in a dark corner somewhere, he continued to innovate and build and when Apple rehired him, he brought those innovations with him, ideas that are still be utilized in Apple computers today.
One of the things that Jobs said though that really made an impact on me is this:
“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
He is describing what it means to be called.
Some people are called to be teachers. Some are called to be pastors. Some are called to lead the world in a digital revolution. No matter what the call, the worse thing in the world is to ignore it. The worse thing is to choose not to follow.
Can you imagine Jesus calling the first disciples and instead of dropping everything and following him, one decided to look the other way instead and go back to fishing? What kind of life would that man have led? It wouldn’t have been a happy one. It wouldn’t have been a fulfilling one. It would have been a life of constantly feeling an itch, a pull at the soul that could not be satisfied.
Oswald Chambers writes that “the call of God is like the call of the sea, no one hears it but the one who has the nature of the sea in him.”
God calls us to the life that is already within us.
When I walk across the parking lot to seminary and feel, for a moment, like I am leading someone else’s life, I’m wrong. I’m not leading someone else’s life. I’m leading my life, the true life that God has put within me.
Whatever it is God intends for us, it should be our life journey to seek that out and once we find it, to grab hold and not let go no matter how rough the seas get.
Thank you Steve Jobs for not letting go.
