“Now let's get back to the essential task of being better human beings”

My iPhone and iPad are fun toys, but following the death of Steve Jobs we heard a lot about how his devices have fundamentally changed life. Um, no.  A view Robert Gottlieb shares:

It is a sign of the incredible spiritual poverty of our time that gadgets like an iPhone or an iPod can be thought of as things that fundamentally change our lives, for they do not. They make for some conveniences and some pleasures, certainly, but conveniences and pleasures are not really the center of our lives; or if they are, that tells us something deeply sad in and of itself.

For example, now that I can carry 150 hours of music on a device slightly bigger than a fat credit card, do I understand the music any better? Do I appreciate it more than when I had to take an old LP out of cardboard sleeve, put it on the turntable, and place the needle on the grooves? Having all that glorious sound at my disposal, in three seconds to be able to choose from thousands of tracks of classical, jazz, new age, pop, or folk—does it make me love it more? Or just trivialize the experience so that I take it all for granted?

More important, far more important, now that I have a cell phone and can "reach out and touch" any of my contacts with a quick call or quicker text, do I care about any of them more deeply? Am I any better at keeping in touch with people I haven't talked to for awhile, or healing wounds from the past, or dealing with differences that arise within my family? Am I more honest about what I feel? More compassionate about other people's suffering? Any less likely to show off when I get an article published or gossip about some third party who both my phone pal and I dislike?

If you have a cell phone that takes videos, plays games, reads bar codes, provides instant maps to anywhere, and can use the half million or so apps available, are you a better person than you were before you got it? Any more able to handle questions of life and death, to face aging or illness, pain or disappointment? Is a world of terrorism and imperialism, environmental blight and staggering debt, hunger and poverty and sexual violence less frightening?

I heard all about "there's an app for that." Is there one for wisdom?

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Rest in peace, Steve Jobs, and thanks a lot for the toys. And now let's get back to the essential task of being better human beings.

Roger Gottlieb