Steve Jobs, San Francisco: Reflections

Coming back from our last trip I was going to write my next post on New York but that day we heard the sad news that Steve Jobs, the visionary co-founder and CEO of Apple, had died at age 56. Steve Jobs was a creator, a ground breaker, the mastermind behind so many inventions that have affected the lives of millions of people around the world. His Apple’s personal computer, iPad, iPod, iMac, iTunes and iPhone have changed technology. His designs were simple but elegant. Steve Jobs has been mourned around the world. His fans left candles and flowers at Apple stores as they paid homage to this technology pioneer. Below is an AP picture showing tributes left at an Apple store in the Ginza shopping district of Tokyo.



The news of his passing was all over the airwaves. Excerpts from a commencement address he gave at Stanford University in California in 2005 were much quoted. As I listened to it I could not help thinking that his words sounded like the philosophy I read in many of my Buddhist books which I started to buy in San Francisco in the 60s. Steve Jobs told the graduates that day “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.” The Dalai Lama wrote “Of all the different kinds of awareness, awareness of death and impermanence is best.”



Knowing not much about Steve Jobs apart from his persona as an extraordinary technology innovator, I started reading about him. I read that having been born in San Francisco, the 1960s counterculture of the San Francisco Bay Area shaped his worldviews. I came to the USA in the early 1960s and lived in downtown San Francisco for about nine years – I can attest that the culture there at the time was totally exhilarating. At the top of this post is a 1939 postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge. Below is a postcard, I guess from the 1940s, of a cable car and turntable at Powell Street, San Francisco.



A Time Magazine article, written in 1995 by Steward Brand, stated that “We owe it all to the hippies – Forget antiwar protests, Woodstock, even long hair. The real legacy of the sixties generation is the computer revolution.” (Special issue, Spring 1995, Volume 145.) That may be true, but at the time, I did not know the word “computer.” Below are a couple of pictures of me in San Francisco.



If you lived in San Francisco in the 60s, your philosophy of life was heavily influenced by the city’s culture. Below is a house on a street not far from where I lived.



Whether protesting

March in April 1967 (courtesy UC Berkeley)

or meditating like I am doing on the beach in the picture below




living in San Francisco was invigorating and had long lasting effects. Some went and created communes, like our friends at The Farm community in Tennessee (see my post on The Farm here.) Some created businesses. Referring to San Francisco, Steve Jobs said at his high school graduation in 1972 “the very strong scent of the 1960s was still there.”

Steve Jobs in 1975 (all photos of Steve Jobs taken from Web, anonymous authors.)

Steve was born in San Francisco in 1955. His father was a Muslim Syrian immigrant to the U.S. and was not married to his mother until two years after his birth. His unwed mother gave him up for adoption. He was adopted by the family of Paul Jobs and Clara Jobs. Clara Jobs was Armenian - her maiden name was Hagopian. Her parents had emigrated from Turkey to the US. My Armenian father who also emigrated from Turkey had a cousin called Hagopian, which is a common family Armenian name. I read that Steve’s mother had played a very big role in bringing him up. It is also reported that Steve had a good command of the Armenian language (if this is true, my hat is off to him, as this is a very hard language to learn.) Steve went on a spiritual voyage to India and converted to Buddhism. Zen Buddhist monk Kobun Chino Otogawa officiated at Steve’s wedding in 1991.

Gary Li, secretary of the US Buddhist Association said “from his past interviews and speeches, we could see the embedded influences of Buddhism.” This is also what I had noticed when I heard the commencement address he gave at Stanford. Steve said ” Your time is limited. Don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drowned your own inner voice. And, most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” This is what the Buddha said about “dogma” "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” (Buddha.)

Steve Jobs also said in the same address “When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation.” That surprised me. I had spent hours reading our Whole Earth Catalogs. Here are our well-used copies below.




These catalogs were the best. At the time (early 70s) I purchased also A Catalogue of the South and the First London Catalogue, but they were nothing like the Whole Earth Catalogs.




Steve Jobs ‘address to Stanford Graduates can be read here. He finishes his address by saying ”On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself.” I think that best describes what he liked. He was undeterred by conventions, he was extremely creative and loved to be different. He will be missed.

“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” (back-cover of my last Whole Earth Catalog.)