No, it does not. So he had a hard life and upbringing. Big deal. Did you ever read about Andrew Carnegie and his upbringing? Yet for all his problems growing up, Carnegie became one of the richest and most famous steel manufacturers in the world. He also gave lots of his money away to charities as well, trying to help people who were not as fortunate as he was. Yet nobody lights candles or leaves flowers on this man’s grave. And one could make a case that Carnegie’s philanthropy helped more people in his day than any of Jobs’ charitable contributions. So if the only qualification for being a great man is being wealthy and selling a lot of stuff, then Carnegie was way ahead of Jobs.
My point is, we are turning people like Jobs into something they are not, some sort of national icon, and ignoring the real people who have changed the world, individuals like Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and many, many, others. I am not taking anything away from Jobs’s accomplishments, for they are many. He transformed the way we look at computers, and good for him. He also sold a lot of computers and made a lot of money. Also, good for him. But Thomas Edison created the light bulb and hundreds of other inventions, yet I don’t see him being revered as Jobs is today. Inventions are great for improving our lives. But there are a few people who have actually changed mankind, and Jobs is NOT one of them.
