words
"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true."
Steve Jobs, 1955-2011
Full text of his Stanford commencement speech here.
Sometime last year, I was walking by the waterfront at Marina Bay with a friend. Towers of glass surrounded us, the view of the city before us was splendid. We sat on a bench, and I took out my iPhone, and played The Strokes' "I'll Try Anything Once". After that it played U2's "All I Want Is You", and more songs along the same drift, songs I threw together into a playlist months before, that months later became the perfect things to listen to in silence, perfect for the unspoken, but understood thoughts we shared. I felt like we were seeing everything from a great height, suspended in time.
I think about all the little moments this little bit of technology created, how it makes it possible to take the most age-old pleasures - listening to music with friends - and have it happen whenever we like, whenever it feels right.
Steve Jobs didn't invent the mobile phone or portable music player but he turned it into something easy, something instinctive, something everyone could own and make their own moments. Pixels + chips = magic. Who knew?
Steve Jobs, 1955-2011
Full text of his Stanford commencement speech here.
Sometime last year, I was walking by the waterfront at Marina Bay with a friend. Towers of glass surrounded us, the view of the city before us was splendid. We sat on a bench, and I took out my iPhone, and played The Strokes' "I'll Try Anything Once". After that it played U2's "All I Want Is You", and more songs along the same drift, songs I threw together into a playlist months before, that months later became the perfect things to listen to in silence, perfect for the unspoken, but understood thoughts we shared. I felt like we were seeing everything from a great height, suspended in time.
I think about all the little moments this little bit of technology created, how it makes it possible to take the most age-old pleasures - listening to music with friends - and have it happen whenever we like, whenever it feels right.
Steve Jobs didn't invent the mobile phone or portable music player but he turned it into something easy, something instinctive, something everyone could own and make their own moments. Pixels + chips = magic. Who knew?
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