America’s Lost, not Last, Innovator

Earlier this week, when I heard of Steve Jobs’ death, I was in shock like everyone else.  For a moment, I felt like someone close to me had passed away…like a vast silent emptiness around me.  After some time, I realized that I might be over reacting.  I mean, I didn’t know Steve Jobs.  I wouldn’t miss him in my day to day life.  Or would I?

Today, when I sit down in my family room and I have an impromptu desire to look at something on the internet, I no longer go to my study.  I don’t pull out my laptop.  I grab something that is always lying around the house somewhere, the iPad.  It’s ubiquitous presence is so taken for granted in our house that when it’s missing (or hiding on the piano face forward in plain sight), my family and I seem lost and so annoyed that we actually have to get up and find a computer in the house.  Now imagine if it didn’t exist…a world without Steve Jobs…and there begins the reason for the grief.

Hearing about his death, I was not worried about Apple.  I wasn’t even worried about our world of technology.  I’ve spent most of my career in technology and I’ll be the first to tell you that I was never in love with it.  Shoes, yes, the newest technological craze, hardly.  So…again…why was I so upset?  As I begin to dig deeper, I realized that I am sad for what would never be.  I am sad for the loss of what I don’t have that I might have wanted, had it existed.  A hope taken away in such an untimely manner.

When I travel outside of the United States, it always seems like the world snickers a bit at an American passport these days.  Where once, we were utopia, today, we are like a washed up actress, once remembered for her exquisite beauty, but now only seen as poor has-been.  It’s humbling.  Recently, during my travels, after being introduced as “living in America,” right away folks started to comment, “What does America do now?  They don’t produce anything, do they?  We don’t even send our kids to school there anymore.” 

Now, I’m not one for putting other people down but their words bit.  I couldn’t figure out if I was more angry that they were saying it (how dare you!), or if possibly, because in some way, I felt it was true.  As their casual banter continued around the downward slide of America, it’s messy politics and lack of producing anything, I felt the venom creeping up inside me, unable to stop the vomit of my words.

“What’s that you’re carrying there, an iPhone? – that’s American.” 

“Let me see that for a second…look at that, the first icon on your iPhone is a big blue F – that’s Facebook – that’s American.” 

“Ever search something on the internet? That’s Google – that’s American.”  

“The movie that you went to go see earlier about Wall Street – the new version – That’s American.”

“The Xbox that your son plays all day – that’s American.”

I think I spoke so fast and hard that they all shut up.  And thank god they did.

America has innovation.  America has creativity.  That’s what we have.  The death of Steve Jobs means so much because we lost a piece of that ingenuity.  We lost a piece of what we didn’t know yet that we might want…and that the world might want.  We lost an opportunity for countless jobs to be created, virtually out of nothing.  He didn’t just give jobs for people at Apple.  He created countless jobs around the world for application writers and other i related interfaces.  That’s the brilliance…and the loss.

What’s the lesson for us?  The lesson is to go for our dreams.  To see a vision in our minds and create something out of nothing.  The lesson is to push ourselves and our children forward in higher learning so that we are the first, whether it is technology, advances in medicine, alternative energy, organic farming, or anything else that drives us.  Our “Job” is to innovate and collectively try to take the place of our lost Innovator in order to move forward.  Our “Job” is to take that grief and channel it into a million new products that create a million new jobs for this country.   Let this one lost Innovator give a silent championing voice to a million new ones. That and only that will be an appropriate farewell.