tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-591628142044402702.post-29101836517000635872011-10-07T11:09:00.000-07:002011-10-13T05:11:10.355-07:00The other Apple…?Steve Jobs’ untimely death is a great loss to the world. The tributes are universal and well deserved – a man whose vision transformed the style and the substance of our engagement with this networked age. All of us who use the extraordinary products he produced – “imagineered” is the wonderful descriptive term – feel a great debt to him and his vision. <br /><br />It is not to question that debt or achievement that I’ve been reflecting on where his death leaves us. We are ever-more efficiently in touch with each other, and, to use Wikipedia’s phrase, with “all the world’s knowledge”. Through beautiful, invisibly-pixelated screens we manage our businesses, our leisure, our friendships, our learning. At ever-higher frequencies, we connect with the world’s news, gossip and current affairs and find answers to the questions which trouble us. We can mobilise unparalleled crowds for good causes; shine light on good deeds and ill-deeds; we can open up the world. <br /><br />But what about the other Apple – Eve’s - which, in the Genesis myth, sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims, changed forever the relationship between man and God? How can Steve Jobs’ great corporation and legacy illuminate the extraordinary moment in that story, when the first man and the first woman – still, at that point, unnamed and lacking individuality – take a fateful initiative, eat the forbidden fruit, and discover themselves and their mortality? Up to that point in the story, they are merely actors, created out of dust, out of each other, and without personality or purpose. After the Apple, they are entirely human – Adam blames Eve; Eve blames the serpent; they are naked and ashamed. They discover their individuality – ha-adam (“the man”) becomes “Adam”; “the woman” – because that is all she has been called up to this point – is named Eve. They discover their mortality – and their immortality, because Eve learns she will have children. Her name means “mother of all life”. Individually they will die – “from dust you have come, and to dust you will return” – but their legacy will live on.<br /><br />Can we draw some connection between these two Apples, on this sad day? Steve Jobs has given us unparalleled, beautiful access to the tree of knowledge - that’s of course why his beautiful logo is so ubiquitous and familiar. But, with his loss, and the big questions which are raised by anyone’s death, can his Apple help our understanding and coming-to-terms? In some ways of course it can – it can give us the means to explore the different approaches of our own and others’ faith traditions, and so give us the grammar to discuss and reflect on these timeless questions. (This is why Coexist has invested so heavily in computer programmes, developing our own Apps in our “Understanding Faiths” series.) But in so many ways, the Steve Jobs’ Apple is a distraction from these big questions – the ever-higher frequencies mean ever-narrower wavebands; the binary distinctions mask the complexity of what it means to be human; and we lose the moment to address what matters. “Timeless” is a curious adjective – our gadgets both save us time and lose it.<br /><br />“All the world from your Cell!” could be an advertisement for the latest i-Phone and its miraculous reach. It is in fact an admonition from one of the early Greek fathers – those Christian pioneers from the early years of the church who went off into the desert to ponder their fate and their faith uncluttered by the preoccupations of every-day life. As we reflect on Steve Jobs and his remarkable legacy, we might keep both cells, and both apples, in mind…<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/591628142044402702-2910183651700063587?l=coexistfoundation.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Coexist Director: James Kidnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04004856828722661879noreply@blogger.com