I lectured about Steve Jobs today

I gave a lecture about Steve Jobs today. It was a little self-indulgent – I mean, maybe I was the only one who was really feeling it today – but it was for a point. My media and society class talks about the intersection of civilization, technology, and the media content we create. There was no better platform to talk about what it means that we lived in the era of Steve Jobs.

I went through the history of Apple, good and bad. I talked about Steve’s vision, for better or worse, and how his long term sense of where media was headed guided short term actions. I showed them the video I embedded above (go to 0:25 to start), talked about how Jobs couldn’t see this kind of potential in computers without being something of a Renaissance man. You can’t draw parallels between science, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and technology like he so often does without being a reader, without being curious. And the building blocks of success start with understanding the small things, the part about how things work.

I wept a couple times while talking about what he meant to me, that professors have heroes that inspire their minds too. I told them that my experience with computers taught me to hack my way through life, figured out how stuff works, and how to troubleshoot. It made me an independent thinking man, not a slave to the Macintosh. I challenged them to be curious, to use their time in Lehigh’s liberal arts environment to stretch themselves, take a class in something they know nothing about, to grow in ways that don’t seem to fit with their major.

I told them to find their passion. It’s the one thing I don’t often see in Millennials, and it saddens me. This age group has had a lot of varied experiences, but I worry they have trouble settling on one or two things that they really freaking love. And it’s that love for what you do that drives you to greatness. You can’t half-ass it. So I practically told them they’re wasting their time if they aren’t pursuing what they love here at Lehigh, here of all places in a place where it’s safe to do so.

I didn’t say it outright, but if they were really, really listening they should have connected the dots and gotten the following charge at the end of class. Go create stuff. Lots of stuff. Don’t wait for me to tell you to do it and - for the love of God – don’t wait for it to be assigned in a class or be for credit on the student newspaper. The great ones are never off the clock. They create stuff because it matters, not because they’re told to.