Technologist idol Steve Jobs's dusk: human paradigm still goes

As a technology idol in the era of consumerism, Jobs will become a human model for textbooks, or if the stock price fluctuations that Apple has experienced recently, will it be a cloud?

Jobs resigned. On that day, Apple's share price plunged 7%. On the next few days, Goguchi was flat and Apple's market value was the highest in the world. For Jobs, the slightest turmoil in the stock price is not happy. Will the "dictator" CEO be optimistic about the future of Apple? Will there be a slight loss?

There is no doubt that Jobs has replaced Bill Gates as the first icon in today's technology field. He often holds a clever gadget, a beam of followers on a broad and silent stage, and a sermon. The new features are described one by one, behind which is a large and clear product logo. Spread through the pervasive network, the world is hot and cold.

The idol of science and technology has always been the spokesperson of the highest human knowledge and ambition to explore. Jobs's achievements and personal charisma have undoubtedly allowed him to obtain the same qualification as his predecessors.

Since the second industrial revolution brought the age of electricity, human ambitions have reached an unprecedented height. The background of the movie Deadly Magic directed by British director Christopher Nolan is set here: At the end of the 19th century, the magician visited the scientist Nikola Tesla in search of the ultimate magic. The electric madman designed for the magician. A weird machine: self-replicating by breaking down the body with a strong current. The film is not just a fantasy imagination. In history, not only Tesla has its own people, but it is also a famous inventor and physicist. At that time, people were still exploring the boundaries of science and technology. The inventor with a dreamer's temperament was once madly caught up in the study of wireless energy transmission, and finally came back without success. His competitor, Thomas Edison, became the first technology icon in the electric age with his invention of genius and pragmatic management. Even as far away as China, the story of Edison was still praised by elementary school students.

The ancient Greeks were good at making God. Everything in the world was controlled by God, but only the "God of science and technology" was missing. After artificial light turned the night into daylight, humans finally bowed down to the hands of the “science and technology gods” created by their own hands. Scientific rationality was elevated to an unprecedented level, and science was thought to gradually reveal the ultimate puzzle of the universe. Einstein brought the world of atoms. Whether or not you know what the equation of quality is, it is absolutely a regrettable choice for the body of “E=MC2”. The equation that reveals the secret of the universe is far more than your physical body. Got longer. In 1951, the genius scientist published articles and letters in succession, pointing out that the United States’ military expansion strategy is a serious obstacle to world peace. Ten years later, the Soviet Union, the other side of the Cold War, sent mankind into space for the first time. After only eight years, Armstrong held the American flag on the moon.

The names of these people became synonymous with the glory of human science and technology rationality, passed down from generation to generation, prompting people to be proud of themselves. However, how many years have not caused such a sensational scientific incident?

One detail is easily overlooked. After the end of Einstein’s life, after the end of World War II, a trend of thought that the academic community called “consumerism” developed rapidly. World War II greatly promoted the level of human manufacturing and assembly, and became a booster of productivity after the war. Substance can no longer only meet the basic needs of people's survival, but has the possibility of redundancy and waste. Marcuse, a member of the Frankfurt School, has long seen that encouraging and expanding the consumer demand of the people has become one of the conditions for the healthy operation of capitalism. To achieve this goal, the consumer's desires, needs, and emotions become the objects of the role of capital, control, and manipulation, and become a desire engineering or marketing project.

In 1970, the French philosopher Baudrillard published the "Consumer Society", pointing out that human society is moving from production to consumption, and consumption constitutes the dominant logic of human society. This was a bit of a shocking statement at that time. In the context of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, it did not seem that they had thrown their due echoes. The US Apollo Moon Project spent US$25.5 billion over 11 years. At the peak of the project, it participated in the project. There are 20,000 companies, more than 200 universities and more than 80 scientific research institutions, with a total number of more than 300,000. The national competition and worries about the Third World War became the mainstream proposition of society at that time until the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991.

At this point, the television has become a must-have appliance for American families. The Internet has completed its pregnancy in October and is ready to do a great job. The mass media will become the leader of global culture in the following decades. The United States took the lead in the emergence of "consumerism," and Bill Gates became the first technology icon of the era. He was in the same position as the Windows operating system he invented was the 13th consecutive year he won the title of the world's richest man. After Gates left Microsoft, Microsoft finally lost to Apple under Jobs, because the latter went further in understanding the word "consumption."

When Jobs was young, he could not let the operating system be a weapon for computers to enter personal desktops. Apple did not have such a long and outstanding hardware development experience as Microsoft. However, he led a new sales and consumption model, and the sensitivity to the user experience made up for it all. These deficiencies. 40 years ago, Baudrillard said that people buy some supplies not only as "use as a tool" but also as "a factor of comfort and superiority" and willing to pay for the latter. Consumers love the brand of goods. And symbolic meaning is more than the practical value of the goods. In a sense, Jobs really knows this.

If Jobs is the technological icon of this era, it is better to call it a marketing hero or a master of consumer psychology. What needs to be stated is that there is no slight disdain for the intellectual nature and contribution of Jobs himself. It is only in this consumer-led society that too many smart people are engaged in “How to make everyone love and buy my products”. The technology idols of this era will eventually become human models for textbooks, or will the stock price fluctuations that Apple has experienced in recent days be a fall cloud?

Zhang Junwu: Jobs Uses "Useless" to the Fullest

Zhou Shu First Financial Daily: How would you evaluate Steve Jobs and his products?

Zhang Xiaowu: The Apple series attaches great importance to the user experience. The technical content and functionality are not necessarily the best. The strength of Jobs is to accurately grasp people's consumer psychology and fashion trends. His iPod and iPad are not prominent use value, but exist as a fashion product, use these products will appear to be very fashionable. Especially in China, these products have become a symbol of status in a sense, indicating that you are a fashionable person.

Daily: Can you say that Jobs conforms to the laws of consumerism, or that he is one of the people who created the law?

Zhang Xiaowu: The core of consumerism is not the use of value, but the identification of your identity, shaping your character, and demarcating your position in society. When the iPhone 4 came out, the communication effect was not good, but because the use value is not its core value, everyone is eager to pursue it. It's like using a LV bag and an ordinary bag. It's actually the same, but some people think that using a LV bag is better. This is consumerism. What you use is what determines the fit between you and the trend.

Consumerism is the marginalization of use value. Jobs is precisely grasping and adapting to the trend, using his product as a status symbol. Others start from utilitarian ideas and feel that usefulness is best. And Jobs' direction is that uselessness is the best. For example, many people only use the iPad as a game console because they do not think it is a work item.

Daily: In his product line around the formation of a kind of worship, and many people have a strong worship of Jobs himself, this is also a unique phenomenon of the consumer society?

Zhang Zhaowu: Rendering mystery is a major feature of this kind of worship. Jobs is packaging himself as a singer, emphasizing his maverick style and trying to create a mysterious atmosphere.

He didn't succeed in his early years as a Mac, and he was even overwhelmed by IBM. Later he discovered that his area was in consumer fashion. The emphasis in the computer field is on the office. What they do is to cater to the public. While Jobs’s mysticism must show his talent in the field of fashion consumption, and the masses are not satisfied with the state of being pleased, his rejection has shown an alternative attraction.

He has various legends, attractive biographies, various speeches and maxims, and distances from the public. He does not cater to the public. But in fact how he should attend the event, how to be interviewed, there are countless things. What he took was a way of rejecting and catering to it. I did not please you, but you came to worship me instead. In consumerism, there are often tactics that use repulsion to please, which can be said to be time-tested. And completely rejecting the public will not be able to achieve such results.

Daily: What do you think about the difference between Jobs and Gates?

Zhang Qiuwu: It should be said that it is the same destination and it is sought after by the general public. Gates is very practical, flexible, and has the largest market. Taking an analogy of the characters of the Chinese film industry, Gates is Feng Xiaogang and will not be particularly surprised. However, he will always take into account the feelings of the largest crowd and will certainly achieve great success. This will surely have Jobs. He is similar to Jiang Wen. It may be that one movie failed, but the next movie will be very successful. Steve Jobs has transformed space, turned the computer's applicability into an accessory role for Apple's products, and made entertainment products, so that non-mainstream practices have been successful.

Daily: Some people think that Jobs has not left anything other than to stimulate people’s desire to spend too much. What do you think of this?

Zhang Xiaowu: These desires are what people really need. They are the needs of humanity and the soul. Human nature is an interest in useless things. Jobs is catering to people's psychology. Just like eggs and abalone, eggs are much cheaper than abalone, and their nutritional value is even higher, but there will be an “abalone better” view. He accurately grasped this kind of thinking of people in terms of function. He was a creative artist and a performing artist. He used what he called “uselessness” to the fullest extent. Although there are other MP3s and tablet computers, different people have different satisfaction. This is also a characteristic of the consumer society.

Of course, it is necessary to maintain a calm reflection on the excessive consumption desire. However, we must also recognize the characteristics of human nature.

(Zhang Haowu is currently a professor of the Chinese Department of Peking University)

Zhu Dayi: The materialization of idols is the result of the loss of spiritual values.

Xu Jia First Financial Daily: What are the characteristics of Steve Jobs that are consistent with the "time idol"? Does the public’s mad admiration of Apple products just coincide with the connotation of “consuming more to assume the function of self-expression and identity”?

Zhu Dayo: The worship of Jobs contains a variety of complex emotions and values. Its core is the worship of fashion electronic devices and the worship of heroes who create commercial myths. Of course, it also includes worship of wealth and power. Even his sick face can be seen as a chic and stylish look for business heroes.

Daily: In terms of science and technology, the objects we admired experienced a transition from Edison and Armstrong to today's Bill Gates and Jobs. What kind of mentality changes are reflected?

Zhu Dake: From scientific idols to commercial idols, this is a major transformation of values. It is an inevitable product of the logic of money worship. In the era of consumerism, this concept is doomed to become a dominant concept. All other values, like science, democracy, freedom, and ultimate care, must make way for money.

Daily: In the 60s of the last century, Lowental proposed in his "Consumer Idol View" that the idols of the times have already transitioned from production idols to consumer idols. Is this conclusion still valid today?

Zhu Dake: It seems to say only one side of things. The more important transformation is that idols shift from spiritual idols to material idols. This means that today's idols are not used for faith but for entertainment and consumption.

Daily: What do you think about the depoliticization and demotivation of public idols?

Zhu Dake: This seems to be a double-edged sword. It successfully subverts deceptive political idols, but it also disintegrates the most basic public ethics. After the power was weakened, "rogue" climbed onto the stage of history.

Daily: Is it possible to see the evolution of idols under consumerism as a kind of “fall of idols”, reflecting our lack of spiritual connotation and cultural values?

Zhu Dake: Yes. In my opinion, the materialization of idols is actually the result of the loss of spiritual values. All spiritual temples have collapsed, and those that have been rebuilt on the ruins can only be malls that satisfy low-level utilitarian desires.

(Zhu Daye is currently Professor of the Institute of Cultural Criticism at Tongji University)