A Story About Steve and Marina

Photo: twistedsifter.com

The twist is fun in Apple style, and is reminiscent of that phenomenal scene in the cult Monty Python film, The Life of Brian, when the unintended prophet tries to convince his followers from the window of his family home that he is not the Messiah and that they all need to think with their own heads. “That’s right!” cheered the delighted crowd. “You’re all different”, yelled Brian helplessly. A timid, lonely voice spoke up from the crowd, “I’m not!”

Photo: Dragan Kujundžić

Steve Jobs has died, the greatest son of all global nations and nationalities, I mean really, all that was missing were some mermaids and Verdi’s Requiem on television. His ascetic figure watched us from the front pages, television stations interrupted their regular programs, accidental passers-by cried, authors and engineers wrote touching obituaries, and the pillars of society competed in who would pay tribute to the best one among them.

Steve Jobs has died, the Comrade Tito of our times, the John Lennon, who imagined a better world, the Che Guevara, who crated it, the Nikola Tesla, who shifted its borders, the Martin Luther King, who taught us that all men in it are equal, the Kurt Cobain, who taught us they were not, and the Jesus Christ who, from the podium of Stanford University, called upon people to believe.

Steve Jobs was a genius who changed our world. It is unreasonable to argue with that. How did he change it? Simply: both the economists and essayists have agreed in these days of national mourning that his most ingenious idea was that people should not be sold what they need, but be convinced that they need what you’re selling. The entire corporate economy fits that sentence: we know what you need.

However, how did Jobs know this? He didn’t. He merely convinced the buyers of his inventive, fun and magnificently useless gadgets that they are different from others, and that they are exactly the ones who will not be persuaded. Think different! is Apple’s famous credo from the time when the orange iMac still had something to be different from, and rebellious against. In a finally globalised world the whole thing will turn out to be an ingenious scam: when the Che Guevara of the corporate era realized that people did not want freedom, but were instead merely widening the expanse of need, he first convinced them that they needed to be free of that need, and then he sold it to them for 499,90 dollars.

And so, Steve Jobs has departed, without living to see his dream realised, namely, that in the end, everyone will have an iPod and iPad, and nobody will remain the same as everyone else, and everyone will be different.

Photo: EPA

The twist is fun in Apple style, and is reminiscent of that phenomenal scene in the cult Monty Python film, The Life of Brian, when the unintended prophet tries to convince his followers from the window of his family home that he is not the Messiah and that they all need to think with their own heads. “That’s right!” cheered the delighted crowd. “You’re all different”, yelled Brian helplessly. A timid, lonely voice spoke up from the crowd, “I’m not!”

One such story, but no longer orange and fun in Apple style, or seriously funny in Monty-Python style, was published that same day in the same papers, with the ascetic figure of Steve Jobs on the commemorative front page. The story is of 12 year-old Marina, pupil of the sixth form in one Zagreb primary school, who goes through hell and throws up every morning when she goes to school, just because her parents are poor and she doesn’t have an iPhone.

“I can’t take it anymore. Everyone hurls abuse at me. The entire class. When the school holidays ended and I remembered that I had to go back to school, I felt literally sick”, says Marina through her tears. “The main reason is that mum and dad are poor, that I don’t have Nike tennis shoes, nor Diesel jeans, nor an iPhone.”

In a wonderful twist of events, which the blasé apostles of Welch’s business seminars in the Lisinski Centre would die and give their iPhones for, all the other 28 pupils from Marina’s class do have the branded tennis shoes and jeans, and equally metaphorically and not metaphorically at all, they all have an iPhone or iPod, “they’re all different”, with the white wires hanging from their ears. Only Marina isn’t. She is the same as everyone else, she wears jeans bought from the smugglers on the market and has an ancient mobile phone. In class, however, she’s the last one like that, the same, that is. All the other 28 pupils are different. They have Nike tennis shoes, Diesel jeans and an iPhone.

“Think different”, exclaims the Prophet from the lectern at Stanford. “Yes, we will”, reply 28 pupils and their parents in unison. “You’re all different”, he continues. “Yes, we are!” reply the pupils as one.

“I’m not”, says little Marina timidly from among them.

So, were it not for the Great Corporation, neither Marina nor her parents, tragically out of step with this exciting new age, would know what they really need. And were the Prophet alive, little Marina would be the ideal star of the new iPhone 4S campaign, a 30-second film with a happy ending. Never doubt that genius! Think different, be different. Don’t lag behind the times, and don’t remain the last one to be the same.