The Great Lie of Steve Jobs: How Everyone Was Made Slaves

The Macintosh—aka the Apple Mac—was first introduced to the public in an ad during the Super Bowl. This is the final game for the championship of the National Football League in the United States, a super-top event. For Americans, this is the most important, significant date, when tens of millions of viewers sit in front of television screens, devouring an incredible amount of chicken wings, strips, chips and other fast food rubbish. Advertising during the Super Bowl, when the two best teams meet, costs a fortune. Apple, of course, had them.

It is significant that the advertising of the first Mac played on the theme of “1984” and Big Brother. The latter was broadcasting from the screen, and in a huge alarming hall, stern guys with shaved heads listened to him (they say that real skinheads were hired for these roles). However, unexpectedly, a spectacular blonde in an Apple T-shirt (played by athlete and model Anya Major) appeared in the hall and, rushing towards the screen with Big Brother, threw a hammer at him. The voice declared: “Apple will introduce the Macintosh on January 24th.” And you will understand why 1984 will not be like Orwell’s 1984.” Effective? Very! The specialists from Apple – the best in marketing – calculated everything perfectly.

The Cold War was going on, and Americans believed that the Kremlin was not only preparing nuclear strikes on the United States, but was also monitoring every citizen of fifty states. At the same time, many demanded to limit global computerization so as not to violate personal freedoms. Apple indulged this request while simultaneously challenging its competitors from Microsoft. Steve Jobs, the essence of Apple, openly stated that if IBM wins, then dark computing times will come. Like those that were shown to us in the same 1984 in the then released cult movie “Terminator”. In general, the two Steves – Jobs and Wozniak – hit on all fronts, presenting the Apple Mac as a symbol of freedom.

Jobs’ rhetoric is interesting. It was akin to the eschatological rhetoric of American presidents, when a banal battle of competitors, a battle for resources and money, was presented as an apocalyptic battle of Light and Darkness. Apple, of course, appointed itself to the role of Good. At the same time, Steve Jobs himself was ideally suited to the role of the prophet of freedom. As he himself admitted, he was shaped spiritually by gurus from India, where he went after dropping out of college, and intellectually by hippies from the communes of the West Coast of the United States. Another figure who influenced Jobs was Stuart Brand, who stood at the center of the American counterculture of the 60s with its passion for psychedelia and drugs. Brand’s colleague was Ken Kesey, author of the cult book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Jobs noted that the most powerful influence on him was Brand’s work “The Whole Earth Catalog” – something like a manual for communes.

Yes, the creator of Apple absorbed such a vigorous cocktail. And some, the majority, see in Jobs a new Prometheus, who brought knowledge to people and liberated them, while others, on the contrary, consider him something like the Antichrist, using rather banal evidence as arguments. Well, for example, the company is called Apple – “Apple”, with a logo in the form of a bitten apple, referring to the fruit that Eve took from the Serpent-tempter and then brought to Adam. The first product, a circuit board called the Apple I, was sold by Wozniak and Jobs for $666. Let him who knows how to count the number of the Beast, as it is said in the Apocalypse. And in the case of Apple there are indeed many such coincidences.

However, if we discard mysticism and conspiracy theories, then it is impossible to deny the fact that it is Apple products, the iPhone, first of all, that opens a kind of portal to other worlds. And often they are filled with hellish visions. In the third season of the cult series Twin Peaks, its creator David Lynch conveys the idea that since the first season the world has changed irreversibly and now the Black Lodge, the other side of our lives, inhabited by demons, is in almost every home, in almost every person. How to get into it? Just take the gadget.

So what has the iPhone become in the modern world? An object of almost religious adoration by people who worship things. How did it happen that people, having nothing, take out crazy loans to buy a new iPhone? It sounds crazy, but it’s true: in China, people are selling their kidneys to buy the latest Apple gadget. The Chinese subway is like a zombie matrix, with people standing on top of each other, immersed in iPhones. And how many stories are there in Russia when people traded everything they could (including themselves) in order to buy not even an iPhone, but to begin with, a place in line for an iPhone. This is not even a cult, but something more, all-subduing.

I remember how at school they asked us – and even recorded the answers on camera – what we children dream about. There are such posts on social networks – find them, and you will be amazed at how different those dreams are from the current ones. Ask today’s children: what do they dream about? Next comes the obligatory question: what are these modern children willing to do for the sake of a new iPhone? The answers will amaze you, if, of course, you are still capable of amazement and are not praying to an iPhone.

And the word “pray” is not accidental here. In the modern world, where, as Nietzsche decreed, God is dead, the iPhone, like any other Apple product, has an almost cultic, religious significance. It is an object of both worship and control. It is no coincidence that Umberto Eco called Apple Catholicism and Microsoft Protestantism. At the same time, the writer noted the Jesuitical ingenuity of Jobs and his associates in creating interfaces that turn into an object of almost religious worship. When a gadget becomes both Holy Scripture and an altar. And this is really something like a religion, with its prophets and shrines. Cultural scientist Byun-Chol Han adds one more important thing to what has been said: he calls the iPhone a modern rosary – that is, it is a tool of control and self-control. That’s right, because only that power is most effective when the slave takes care of himself.

Again, it is not surprising that Steve Jobs was appointed as the messiah of the new world. I remember when he died, almost everyone considered it their duty to buy his book or post his image in their home. And this once again proves how easy it is to deceive society and people. Jobs, the man in jeans and turtlenecks, deliberately presented himself as both the guy who could give sage advice and the super-successful leader of a new generation. He was truly successful – first of all, as the greatest marketer. After leaving Apple, he achieved success with the film company Pixar, and then, having sold it and becoming a billionaire, he triumphantly returned back to the world of “apples.” However, behind this universal success lies a colossal lie. A great liar – that’s what Steve Jobs was.

Having fed the masses the myth of freedom, of liberation through gadgets, he did a truly phenomenal thing: he made billions of people want domination over themselves, and the kind of domination that the slave craves and enjoys. Remember how in “The Matrix”? Not everyone is ready to accept reality as it is. So, for those who want to escape from reality, to hide, there is an iPhone that opens portals to many parallel worlds. Jobs deceived everyone. He assured that phones and computers would give people strength, but in reality technology made them weak. He endowed gadgets with sacred functions in order to generate more consumers even more effectively. Apple, like no one else, knows how to make huge money on literally everything. No wonder Tim Cook was indignant that users of Apple products take them for repairs rather than buy new ones.

Apple was promoted based on messages about freedom, and also on messages about exclusivity and exclusivity: we recall the legendary “Apple” slogan “Think different.” But what do we see in reality? And we see, for example, slave-like working conditions for those who produce Apple products. So monstrous that under the windows of the dormitories where minor employees of the corporation live, they put safety nets against suicides. We see total surveillance carried out through Macs and iPhones. The surveillance that Snowden and Assange exposed, but no one really wanted to listen to them, because people are ready to sacrifice everything, including personal freedom, for the sake of a treasured gadget with an apple. We see pressure on journalists who criticize Apple. The state, from which Jobs promised to make him free, began to monitor citizens even more. And the states themselves began to be controlled by transcorporations.

In January 1984, Apple revealed perhaps the biggest lie of the 20th century. She promised freedom to man and humanity, but took it away, creating the most inhumane and effective form of slavery. That girl from the ad for the first Macintosh threw a hammer at the screen from which Big Brother was broadcasting, and it shattered into millions of small fragments that became iPhones. Now Big Brother is even more closely, vigilantly watching you, everyone – he does this from every screen. And people don’t even think about resisting it. This is what global slavery looks like in a world where slaves voluntarily brand themselves with a bitten apple.