The Show That Stands

Steve Jobs was a phenomenon, much more than just another successful CEO. He is one among those visionaries who proved time and again that persistence on a chosen path can lead to reverential success.

Jobs was a visionary, I said, someone who actually changed the way people perceived something viz. Digital media! Years ago, there was another man- Dennis Ritchie who wrote some codes that laid the foundation for almost everything today including Jobs’ iPhone.

Ritchie is believed to be the father of C language and a co-creator of Unix (which later inspired many other things including Linux). We all knew about him as students. In fact some of us, like me, made it a point to buy the book he had authored on C language (it had a white cover page with a dull blue design on it, and much more boring content inside for an average newbie to programming) when we started learning the language in school. If parallels were to be drawn, there can be no dispute that Ritchie stood way too ahead of Jobs as the bigger visionary (who actually made deeper impact on the society and our life over the years).

Why would I draw such parallels? To those who haven’t seen it already on the news and social media, Jobs and Ritchie passed away around the same time. While one of them was given a heart wrenching farewell all over the globe, the other was simply overlooked. And it should not be a surprise that since we are discussing it here, it cannot have been the way that appears normal.

Yes, while Jobs was mourned all over the world, Ritchie largely drew no one’s attention on death. (Here I am reminded of an editorial that I read which said that it was surprising how Jobs was so popular in India when there was not a single direct Apple store and the i-products were so expensively priced that an average person was very unlikely to be in possession of one)

One of the images going viral on Facebook about this topic

Why did the world hail Jobs while many never remembered Ritchie beyond their school days (though we all still remember/use C or its direct descendent programming languages)? Ok, a quick quiz. Who was Dr.Martin Cooper? Who is Steven Sasson? What did Mathew Gray do in 1993 for the first time that changed internet forever? Any answer? Now match mobile phones, digital camera and search engines to the questions respectively. Do you see that we do not know who created some of the things that we have actually begun using as a part of us?

Remember the mega launches that Jobs held for all i-products? The gung ho over what could be the new Apple product, his routine jokes (‘there is one more thing...’), stage presence, drama over his role in Apple corporation etc. Remember the media appearances and books by Bill Gates at the peak of his success? Remember frequently seeing the face of Jimmy Wales on Wikipedia? The publicity stunts by Richard Branson? We do, of course we do! That could precisely be a major reason. 

If you are an exceptionally brilliant inventor your product will become famous. But if there is a story, a drama, a brand you build around yourself and most importantly continue to create news (good or bad, sometimes futile controversies) until your end, people will invariably remember you and your contributions. Because the more infrequent your face or name becomes the sooner you shall be forgotten! Not that we people are a thankless lot, but things evolve so fast that even five years mean a lot more than what they used to be. Five years back from today facebook was perhaps just a new idea, twitter was just about launched and there were no iPhones!

In such relative speed of time and technology changes, it should not be very surprising why Ritchie’s achievements and his adieu to the wonderful word he helped in shaping was lost in the smoke cloud created by the departure of this person who brought digital multimedia so close to the common man (which again was based on Ritchie’s codes to begin with)! 

After all, it’s your show alone that remains in people’s minds and hence only a showman for life shall get a tearful goodbye and boundless gratitude from people for all that he did for them in his life! This perhaps is what the management guys call 'Personal Branding'.