An Associated Press report of Apple Inc.'s CEO Steve Jobs' resignation last month stated, "Jobs helped change computers from a geeky hobbyist's obsession to a necessity of modern life at work and home." This testifies to Jobs' genius but fails to raise what seems an obvious question: Is it a change for the better or for the worse?
The question is not raised, perhaps, because the answer is considered self-evident. Under Jobs, Apple went from a start-up in his parents' garage to "the most valuable company in America," topping Exxon-Mobile. What can be bad? Business wise, nothing. Otherwise? The word "necessity," for example, seems a red flag. Did the world really need another necessity? Weren't there enough of them?
More concretely, this is, as the business magazine The 21 put it in its August issue, "the age of being connected, always, everywhere." Jobs didn't do it alone, of course, but if the computer revolution has a symbolic, personifying figurehead, he's it. Without him the 21st century would be different. We'd be, probably, less inextricably connected. Is being inextricably connected an unqualified good?