Like any great and successful businessman or leader who presides over an amazingly successful company, Apple’s late co-founder Steve Jobs had the right amount of charisma, intelligence, business acumen, leadership and ruthlessness to succeed at the highest level. With Apple currently riding on a huge high and having some of the most popular consumer electronic products the world has ever seen, his success speaks for itself, so does his legacy.
The 16th Annual Webby Awards, that took place yesterday, recognized the achievements of Jobs through a memorial video tribute. The visual tribute to the great visionary feature a number of famous celebrities such as the Bono, the lead singer of U2 as well as the most powerful man in the world, current United States President Barack Obama. There was even space on the video for former President Bill Clinton. The video was introduced to the audience by a pair of actors known as Justin Long and John Hodgman, probably more well known by the public for their roles in one of Apple’s most popular advertising campaigns.
For those who are lovers of Apple and the company’s iconic advertising campaigns, the actor Richard Dreyfuss returned to the stage to pay his own personal tribute to his friend, Steve Jobs. Although a great actor, Dreyfuss will go down in history amongst technology fans as the man who provided the voice for the amazing "Crazy Ones" commercial, and he was once again in true inspirational and controversial form as he began his speech by having a little dig at the current pretenders to the throne:
Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Brin have you thought of the words quid pro quo? If you’re going to take our privacy away from us, why don’t you tell us something private about yourselves. And if you’re going to change our world, why don’t you pay for it, because it’s theft.
The memorial video played a touching tribute to a man who is clearly so well respected by the people who knew him the best and showed just how much his friends, colleagues and the world will miss Steven Paul Jobs. U2 lead singer, Bono also made reference to the RED campaign and thanked Jobs for his philanthropic efforts that saved countless lives around the world. Legendary movie maker, George Lucas, made reference to the part that Steve Jobs played in making technology into art, and there was even a place for Buzz Aldrin to chime in to praise Jobs in true Astronaut form for "exploring beyond our each".
The video also featured appearances by popular entertainers and public figureheads such as Sarah Silverman, Jimmy Fallon and Arianna Huffington, all who had their own tribute to pay to Apple’s former leader. The video represents a chance for us to remember Steve Jobs and all of the immeasurable good he did for the world, and although the visual tribute was extremely moving, the five single word tribute paid to Jobs by Richard Dreyfuss is what resonates with me the most. Rather than having long drawn out thank you speeches, the Webby Awards have a tried and tested tradition of limiting them to just five words, with describing Steve Jobs as the "exception that proves the rule". I think that says it all.
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