If your immediate answer was “of course” maybe you are right. The next Steve Jobs is out there. He might be unemployed or she might have cancer and not be real clear where her next break is going to come from. Still going to hire the next Steve Jobs?
Context is the irony of our lives. We live in a box of what is happening NOW. Steve Jobs understood NOW, but he wasn’t a resident. Steve lived in the future. In the future everything is always better. Wait a minute, you are thinking; Steve died how is that “better”. There are worse things than dying. Think about it. You were Steve Jobs. Through no fault of your own you got sick. Then you become so sick you can’t BE Steve Jobs. Living can be, for short periods, the final circle of Dante’s Hell. Not being Steve Jobs when you were Steve Jobs would be hellish.
It is easy to get stuck in our macro and micro NOWS. We only see white swans so we think white swans are the only swans. We forecast based on our white swan assumptions. We convince others there are only white swans. Then suddenly from out of some magic world a black swan majestically lands on the lake:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke
Recently I wrote about Internet Marketing Relativity trying to work not knowing what we don’t know into our web development and marketing thoughts. Certainty is becoming the hobgoblin of little minds and a real problem for anyone trying to understand the web well enough to sell something to someone. Steve Jobs lived a simple truth – the future is always better. Remember Steve’s lesson and have the courage to hire a cancer survivor as Atlantic BT did this week. Live comfortably in a rapidly changing world with Internet Marketing’s Accelerating Returns are happening faster and faster and you get to be Steve Jobs or play with his magical toys and that is tantamount to the same thing :).
Martin
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Martin Smith
Director of Marketing
Martin.Smith(at)AtlanticBT(dot)com
Atlantic BT
@Atlanticbt
