JOBS

It would be easy to assume that we have become “relevant” by jumping into the hot topic of “jobs,” both in the Commonwealth and the financial market of the American enterprise system. Being favorably partial to the Obama administration, we would echo the Obama jobs bill as simply a minute adjustment to a great need that is now facing the American household with an almost 10 percent national unemployment level of its population.

Jobs, it is, but a little bit of the flesh-and-blood type, and we go straight to the Obama White House’s attempt at a requiem for Steve Jobs, aka Stephen Paul Jobs, born Feb. 24, 1955, and died Oct. 5, 2011.

The White House’s press release mirrors our sentiment: “By building one of the planet’s most successful companies from his garage, he exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity. By making computers personal and putting the Internet in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only accessible, but intuitive and fun. And by turning his talents to storytelling, he has brought joy to millions of children and grownups alike. Steve was fond of saying that he lived every day like it was his last. Because he did, he transformed our lives, redefined entire industries, and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world.

American ingenuity is affirmed at a time when some are claiming that competition, particularly in the field of solar energy, America cannot compete with China.

Making the information revolution accessible was what first caught my eye in the summer of 1976 when I first heard of Apple while teaching a course in Redlands SoCal, and the two Steves were known to have tinkered in their garage. The marketing that registered was the promise to bring the “library of Alexandria into every home.” Having used that line ourself in convincing families 10 years earlier in the foothills around the Bay Area of California to acquire an encyclopedia for their young children, I was convinced the Steves were unto something.

With a couple of Apple IIs at Trans Atoll Service Corporation (TASC) in Majuro, the Marshall Islands, I was sure the intuitive touch and fun of the powerball was going to make a run of IBM’s money. I actually talked Leo Bacerra, an Ilonggo colleague then living in Chicago who died not too long ago, that if he really supported the human development project I was running on Mactan Island, southern Pea Eye at the time, he can use his blue plastic card and get me a machine with a graphic interface to high-kick the project beyond charity work.  He did and we did.

I actually owned a couple of the original clunky Classics and the Portable Macs, along with everything else from the original Apple to the Mac Powerbook, and had I the foresight, might have kept them in our Honolulu garage where I might be walking with heavier pockets considering what my nephew could get on eBay for them.

That would not be the case. Not only was I broken into nine times while occupying the old CK Head Start building as STaRPO for the autism, Down syndrome and cerebral palsy families, with some fancy Apple units carted out to the ubiquitous Saipan pawnshops, but two of our treasured Mac laptops were also lifted out of an Oleai rental dwelling when a burglar inserted himself into a tiny bathroom porthole in an otherwise secured room to lift out a couple of Steve Jobs’ electronics.

More than the hardware, Steve was way ahead on the software of the brain and mind. Understanding the power of images, as pedagogical science has since discovered, people operate out of images, which determines their behavior, and the change of image, particularly of a revolutionary kind, results in radical change. When behavioral change happens, history changes.

Storytelling with dynamic visuals accompanied Steve’s signature. Pixar and Walt Disney became his platforms and the joy his craft has brought to children and adults around the world is immeasurable. The widespread use of animation in many platforms is changing the way subjects are taught, classroom architecture are designed, and curriculum lesson plans are orchestrated. We laud Rita Sablan and Kilili’s office checklist in this regard.

It was back in 2005 that Jobs revealed some of his thoughts on his finitude and his relationship to mortality at a commencement address not too far from his home in Palo Alto at Stanford University.  He told students: “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” He had a profound handle on the software of the heart, and the operating system of human ontology, a refreshing fresh air off a secular garage that is more lucid than the arcane wisdom of worldwide religion.

Ten years our junior in chronological time, he revolutionized not only the way we see life, but more importantly, the way we live it.  I hack this reflection from the cold winds of Dong Bei for the readers on the tropical waves of Western Pacific, a no small measure of Steve Jobs’ doing, knowing and being.

Steve Jobs. He is gone. He is here. I am.

Vergara is a regular contributor to the Saipan Tribune’s Opinion Section.