Yesterday evening I was as shocked and saddened as many people were at the news of Steve Jobs’ passing. Even though the signs were clear for awhile, I did not believe he would leave us so soon. I suppose I didn’t want to believe it, despite the evidence. It must be one of life’s most unfair aspects that some people never get the chance to enjoy witnessing greatness accrue to their creations. At least Steve got to see his company, their products, values, people and culture rise to the level that it did: the most valuable company on earth. I am grateful that Steve got to see that. And it may be why he left us shortly thereafter.  Following Tim Cook’s successful first experience as CEO during a major product launch, I think Steve knew that his company was in good hands and he could “let go.” It says a lot about our how pivotal our epoch is that the firm that the most valuable company label would not be an oil firm, or a multinational bank, or a defense contractor or an auto manufacturer but would be a revolutionary consumer products company. A technology company. But a technology company that put humans first, pur out experiences with their products, software, hardware first. Put humanity first, not technology. Steve Jobs taught me about beauty. Seems silly to say, though I don’t really feel like qualifying my feelings anymore. Not when they are so raw. That was my first thought last night when I heard the news. One of my teachers was gone and it is OK to be upset.  Albeit someone I had never met, someone I couldn’t even HOPE to meet. Someone I hadn’t met with, worked with, spoken to; someone whose office I didn’t visit.  And nevertheless, Steve Jobs was one of my most important teachers. He taught me that ugly things could be beautiful. He taught me that beauty was an ideal beyond aesthetics, and that when you endeavour to make beautiful things, you could conjour the magic inherent in the universe and open up a whole new set of opportunities for human kind to explore. Build it and they will come. Steve surely must have felt this over the past few years watching independent developers and designers, marketers, filmmakers, entrepreneurs and other creatives use his tools to build things that he could never have thought of. Things that used what he and his incredible team had built, and made the original creation even better. Beauty squared. Steve famously said that the grand project of his life was bridging the gap between technology and the arts. Steve was a storyteller. Just look at his investment in Pixar and the stories and creations that came, and continue to emerge, from that wonderful place. Things that make “grown men cry.” Indeed. As a humanities/ liberal arts guy who has placed himself in the thick of the technology revolution, I can’t help but feel solidarity with Steve’s mission in life. Recently, an iPad app came out that exemplified just what is possible in the space between technology and the arts. T.S. Eliot’s modernist poem The Waste Land is one of those creative accomplishments that defines an era, a touchstone that floors and inspires an entire generation of creatives. It is also responsible for its share of Cliff Note’s and head-shakes, as much of the poem is incomprehensible to a general audience. Replete with all manner of allusions, metaphors, languages both modern and classical, the poem requires a level of erudition that is in serious decline and has been for decades.  I’ve read The Waste Land dozens of times and though there are sections that I am fond of and that I have even memorized, I have never said that I “understand” the poem. Not in its entirety. Even with reader companions, reference books, footnotes, the poem has always remain partially closed to me. I was OK with that arrangement. It didn’t effect my appreciation of Eliot’s work that I couldn’t “get it.” I was hardly alone in that. There are scholars who spend their lives studying the work and make similar claims.  And then this app landed. An iPad optimized application for The Waste Land, complete with videos, line by line readings by multiple voices (including two by Eliot himself, the actor Viggo Mortenson, the British poet Ted Hughes), all the footnotes explained and a user-experience that put everything into context. Finally! I had been waiting for this without even knowing it. A piece of art that I had been transfixed by for over a decade had suddenly, magically, miraculously, opened up to me. I spent an entire weekend with the iPad in my lap, reading the poem again and again, clicking the footnotes, hearing the poem in Eliot’s own voice. It was a revelation. And I suddenly had a vision for what art could be in this still new century. I had a mission of my own. Thank you Steve. With tears in my eyes, I say goodbye.