the bright idea

Steve Jobs on death and God

From Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson:

… “I’m about fifty-fifty on believing in God,” he said. “For most of my life, I’ve felt there must be more to our existence than meets the eye.”

He admitted that, as he faced death, he might be overestimating the odds out of a desire to believe in an afterlife. “I like to think that something survives after you die,” he said. “It’s strange to think that you accumulate all this experience, and maybe a little wisdom, and it just goes away. So I really want to believe that something survives, that maybe your conciousness endures.”

He fell silent for a very long time. “But on the other hand, perhaps it’s like an on-off switch,” he said. “Click! And you’re gone.”

Then he paused again and smiled slightly. “Maybe that’s why I never like to put on-off switches on Apple devices.”

I learned a lot about Apple and its products while reading Jobs’ biography. I also learned a lot from Steve’s story. What’s most intriguing about my experience with this book is that I kept getting the feeling that I was learning things from Steve that Steve never really learned himself. He didn’t seem to learn much from himself and didn’t seem to ‘improve’ much as a person over the course of his life. 

Then again, when one accomplishes what he managed to accomplish in a lifetime, who cares about being a ‘better’ person…