Stephen Jobs understood the power of technology and the essence of technology, in its ability to remind us of our humanity. He did not believe he was selling another product. He wanted to create a product that would change a person’s life and change the world. To an extent, he succeeded as we can see from the ubiquity of his products as well as by what we expect from such products. His work can be understood as a response to (if he was not informed by) the question Heidegger posed in a Question Concerning Technology “What is the essence of technology?” Jobs was trying to reshape our relationship with technology so that how we interacted with it would no longer reveal the tension between culture and technology. Jobs, to paraphrase Heidegger, was creating a “technological clearing” through Apple’s products. He understood that Apple’s products offered an opportunity to regain the space for meditative thinking that Heidegger feared could (would) be (is being) lost to the totalizing influence of modern technology.

¶ 2:50 AM