The Steve Jobs Generation

The virtual world will celebrate Steve Jobs Day on Friday (more info at www.stevejobsday2011.com) with what promises to be another extraordinary outpouring of affection for the man in the black turtleneck. Reaction to Jobs' death has been extraordinary. Of course, some of that is a function of Jobs' relative youth. But it is also a reflection of his enormous impact on the world.

Which leads to a reflection not only on Jobs but on his generation -- the famous baby boom cohort born in the late 1940s through the 1950s (Jobs was born in 1955). Boomers have been in charge of the nation's government since Bill Clinton's election as president in 1992. How has that been working out?

Decades from now, historians may say of the boomers that they weren't very good at politics, but they were awfully good at changing the way people lived in the early 21st Century. Sounds like a contradiction? Not really.

Steve Jobs reminded us that innovators change the way we live, just as surely as laws do. And he is not the only boomer who has transformed us: How about Bill Gates (born in 1955), Oprah Winfrey (born in 1954) and Paul Allen (born in 1953), just to name a few. Their impact on our lives has been profound.

Like the Civil War generation, the baby boomers are not going to be remembered for the presidents they produced -- unless you count Barack Obama as a late boomer, and he may be remembered not because of his accomplishments but because of his cultural importance.

Only history nerds like myself can name the presidents between Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. They were all Civil War vets, those forgotten men with lots of facial hair. But history has not been kind to them. Instead, we remember people like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Susan B. Anthony -- private citizens who transformed life in the late 19th Century through innovation, activism, and philanthropy. (And, at least in Rockefeller's case, through ruthlessness as well.)

Steve Jobs' death was treated with reverence and grief normally reserved for a head of state. But we know that he actually was more importanat, more relevant, than a mere politician.

After all, he changed the way we live. Not many people can make such a claim. Especially, it seems, those boomers we've sent to Washington and elsewhere to "lead" us.