Steve Jobs, the loss of a national treasure?!

[Earth_First]

I heard this quote on my morning drive time news programming.

I understand the contribution that Jobs made to technology and a consumer society, however making the distinction that he is a national treasure is just absurd!

The Declaration of Independance, Mount Rushmore, The Liberty Bell, Statue of Liberty, these are national treasures...

[Myrina]

1. National Treasures don't employ overseas labor ...

... underpaid, overworked, in horrid conditions, to maximize profit.

[Earth_First]

3. ...and this! n/t

[KurtNYC]

2. He lived up to the American myth and renewed it

Vision and the drive to make it real.

Where would America be if we were all running DOS ?

[MattBaggins]

6. There are at least a million other people

who were working on software development creating modern systems.

Jobs did not single handedly bring about modern computing despite what his sycophants would like to believe.

[KurtNYC]

10. and no one knows THEIR names or their work

that's the difference.

Visionary.

[Mudoria]

12. But Jobs did... and he made a nice living off of them

[KurtNYC]

16. one of them stole 65,000 lines of code, created Windows

and made a nice living off of Jobs and Woz's work.

[BoWanZi]

4. I agree on what you call "national treasures" but people aren't them.

Ugh, drives me batty when people refer to other people as national treasures.

I have strong admiration for Steve Jobs but please, save the term national treasure for stuff like you mentioned like the Declaration of Independence, Mount Rushmore, etc, not people and especially not political people.

[NYC_SKP]

5. Well, not the same as one of those things, but up there with Henry Ford as an innovator...

...as a person whose products and vision impacted the course of history and culture, no doubt.

National Treasure?

I don't know...

[bigwillq]

7. That would be a NO

IMO

[catbyte]

8. He'd dead. Let it go. Still miffed over the Chinese sweatshops.

[ixion]

9. It was the loss of a visionary

not sure about the national treasure thing, though.

[DrDan]

11. some consider Michael Jackson to have been a national treasure,

some even see OJ as such.

I say - let folks have their heros. What difference does it really make.

[FSogol]

13. Not a big fan of S. Jobs, but your definition of "National Treasure" is pretty merger.

Sure, national treasure refers to parks, sites, and important artifacts, but it can also denote anything people consider uniquely American and special. Wouldn't Scott Joplin or Duke Ellington be a National Treasure? How about Twain, Hemingway? How about Harry Houdini, B.T. Barnum, Kurt Vonnegut, and Joey Ramone? Garry Trudeau? Garrison Keillor? If someone wants to claim that for Jobs, I wouldn't disagree.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

14. Visionary verging on iconic but not a national hero

[piratefish08]

15. he was a man. a really, really smart man with vision who probably had as many shitty qualities as

me, you and everyone else.


just a man who died too early with cancer. like a shitload of people every year.


he was not a demi-god, computer-producing sky daddy worthy of worship.


just a man, but still sad.