The Passing of Two Innovators
By Robert Ringer - Monday, October 10, 2011
Whenever someone famous died, my dad used to say, “The Grim Reaper just keeps mowing ‘em down, one by one.” Simply put, but accurate. And this past week, the Grim Reaper was working overtime. In a harsh one-two combination, he took the lives of two living legends, Steve Jobs and Al Davis.
What was eerie about the two deaths coming so close together is that not only were both men legends, they were both famous for their contentious personalities. And, unfortunately, they died of the same rare but lethal disease, pancreatic cancer. It’s the same silent killer that took the lives of Patrick Swayze and Luciano Pavarotti, a disease that is almost impossible to detect until it reaches an advanced stage.
How well I remember Jobs taking on Bill Gates and Microsoft in the late seventies, while Al Davis was doing battle with then Commissioner Pete Rozelle and most of the National Football League. I always had the impression that both of these giants enjoyed irritating their adversaries.
On one occasion, when someone asked Bill Gates about a derogatory remark Jobs had made about Microsoft, he replied something to the effect of, “Steve Jobs should spend more time on his own business rather than on badmouthing his competitors.” Jobs, however, mellowed with age, and, in an ironic twist of fate, Microsoft ended up investing in Apple.
In Al Davis’ life, Pete Rozelle played the role of Bill Gates. Rozelle was determined to stop Davis from moving his motorcycle gang — a.k.a the Oakland Raiders — to Los Angeles. It was a long, ugly, drawn-out legal battle, but, in the end, Davis won.
Then, after playing in the decrepit Los Angeles Coliseum for fifteen years, Al Davis, the master of the bodacious surprise, picked up his marbles and moved his beloved Raiders back to Oakland. Sadly, the man whose most famous quote was “Just win baby, win” spent his remaining years desperately trying to resurrect the Raiders to greatness, but, to the delight of his detractors, continually came up short.
Perhaps that’s where the similarities between Davis and Jobs, who died just three days before Davis, end. Incredibly, while battling his illness, the latter years of Jobs’ life were by far his most productive.
After being forced out of Apple in 1985 by John Sculley, whom Jobs had hired as CEO, Jobs founded Next Computer, bought Pixar Animation Studios — which led to Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, and Finding Nemo — and made far more money than he had ever made with Apple.
But the best was yet to come. In 1997, the board of Apple enticed Jobs to return to the company, where his innovative “i” product line has since changed the way we live. At the time of his death, Jobs had already laid out plans for new Apple products for years to come.
The passing of Jobs and Davis also reminded me of a dramatic line from the classic miniseries The Thorn Birds. The movie centers around Drogheda, a large sheep station in the Australian outback, beginning in the 1920s. Drogheda is owned by an elderly and very wealthy widow named Mary Carson (played by Barbara Stanwyck).
In one particularly poignant scene, Mary is standing on the front porch of the main house at Drogheda with Father Ralph de Bricassart (Richard Chamberlain). She is hopelessly in love with the much younger priest, and, at one point, says to him something to the effect of, “You know, a hundred years from now, no one will even remember that any of us even lived here at Drogheda.”
It’s likely that the legacies of Steve Jobs and Al Davis will live far into the future, but their deaths did remind me of how many innovators, in both industry and sports, have been long forgotten. How many people know the name Willis Haviland Carrier, who invented modern air conditioning, or Paul Brown, who virtually invented the modern version of pro football?
Life is remarkably ephemeral — and legacies even more so.
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Copyright © 2012 Robert Ringer
ROBERT RINGER is a New York Times #1 bestselling author and host of the highly acclaimed Liberty Education Interview Series, which features interviews with top political, economic, and social leaders. He has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, The Tonight Show, Today, The Dennis Miller Show, Good Morning America, The Lars Larson Show, ABC Nightline, and The Charlie Rose Show, and has been the subject of feature articles in such major publications as Time, People, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron's, and The New York Times.
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13 Responses to “The Passing of Two Innovators”
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Ten years ago, we had Steve Jobs, Bob Hope and Johnny Cash.
Now, we have no jobs, no hope and no cash.
(Just a little economic joke I heard recently.)
Great article. Great men like these do come and go as this is the cycle of life, but thanks to them we now live the way we do. A few dreamers like them change the world of millions. Too bad people live so little and not like in the Bible times when men lived to be 100′s of yrs. old. These men like many others could have been so productive still giving the world so many great ideas.
…sorry, no tears from me…I think overall Al Davis was very bad for the fans of NFL football….besides creating/allowing for a thug-like fan base that makes attending games unpleasant for civilized people (and that has now spread like a disease to many other cities)…EVERYTHING he ever did was for his own personal benefit not the fans (like pushing for the merger) …which is ok -it’s business…but let’s don’t pretend like he was ” a rebel…the fan’s hero ” or something…his greed-inspired moving of the franchise all around at his whim opened the door for the “blackmail threat ” many NFL cities/fans now live under..and led to the screwing of fans in Oakland, Baltimore, Cleveland,St. Louis , and Los Angeles (twice) ……so far
nfl is heavily tax subsidized circus (a la romans and their coliseum), so already thug-based. and that’s the true crew that opened pandora’s box, the “fans”, the team owners, and the politicians – not this single would-be scapegoat.
i’ll bet loads of circus-going recipients decry the bread-eating recipients, too…the ones not doing both, simultaneously, i mean…irony….
“Having an empire is like having a football team that plays for mortal stakes. It’s fun to watch…at least when your team is winning. And now, Team USA is kicking butts all over the planet. That’s why at football games, for example, (or so we’ve heard) images of the football team are sometimes mixed with images of US combat troops. The flag flies. The lumpen salute. They don’t want to think about it; they just want the homeland team to win!”
http:// lewrockwell.com /bonner/bonner510.html
No tears from me either, Catfur. I knew Al Davis. Good Riddance. All I really know of Jobs is what I’ve read and what I’ve observed him accomplish. “iSAD.”
Thank you RR for reminding us that life is ephemeral as are legacies.
Let us also remember that technology has advanced while the human condition has not. This delta makes for a more dangerous albeit predictable world.
< This delta makes for a more dangerous albeit predictable world.
option trader, scott?
legacy…que sera, sera. not the place to fix ones gaze, as some do, imo (tho high speed driving in reverse stunts are fun to watch – don't know if those are done by rear view mirror, or craned neck….). pandering to posterity, what could that be about? anyway, kierkegaard said it, "life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
Reunion – Perhaps…among other things. Just looking for opportunity.
Thanks for the quote from Kierkegaard as I have enjoyed reading his thoughts over the years and would recommend him to anyone wanting to better understand human nature. You too my friend, are an astute observer of human nature.
One more thought…technology will not save us. Quite the contrary.
As for Jobs & Apple: I tend to be an open architecture guy and shy away from proprietary, closed architecture technology.
“meanwhile, open source coding will eat away at apple, just as it will eat away at microsoft. open source coding will let geniuses all over the world enter the market and offer better solutions.”
gary north spoke to that in an essay today, on LRC. among other things. leaps on apple? maybe.
agree the contrary result of tech, divorced from morality (property rights). for an excellent compare/contrast of the utopianist(s) – and what drives this particular one – and the dystopianists, see ray kurzweil’s “transcendent man”; it streams on netflix. the dystopianists won the argument there, and all things constant forward, as they have been historically, their’s is correct bet. the drone-controlled drones are one more step in the direction of smarter than us machines (and then, who needs us?).
which sorta brings us back to “fans”…I like fans, when correctly mounted to ceilings…it’s when they are mounted to/by politicians that I lose enthusiasm…
thx, scott……
Thanks Reunion, I will definitely check out North and Kurzweil. I don’t suppose you have any problem with protecting property rights with patents and copyrights, am I right?
actually scott, patent and copyright turned out to be yet another of those very counterintuitive things. and by counterintuitive i mean artificial inseminations.
lrc & mises are searchable. suggest rooting around there on the topic. see what you think.
also, michael crichton’s “next” is an enjoyable fact-based novel focusing on some specific egregious counterproductivities of patent. too bad crichton’s gone – he was a voice.
Not so ironic. If I recall correctly, Microsoft invested in Apple to help keep them afloat.
But back to the original point: yes, Jobs was a visionary and became a legend in his time. Here’s a cartoon illustrating this:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/php/galleries/image.php/218/17/17.jpg