Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past month or so, you will be aware of the untimely death of Apple Chairman Steve Jobs and witnessed the world’s reaction to the loss of such a ‘creative genius’.  This outpouring of grief has seen Apple Stores across the world transformed into make-shift shrines, and tributes from no less than President Obama herald Jobs as a ‘world-changing visionary’.  Whilst there is no denying his right to this accolade, I often find myself questioning whether the impact his products have had on society really is something to be celebrated.  But before the iPhone-brandishing brigade start downloading a shotgun app, let me explain my logic.

Yes, an iPad is an amazing object; with it you can surf the internet, play games, read books, listen to music and do pretty much anything you would ever want or need to do with an electronic device, but allow me to pose an obvious question: is there anything that you can do on an iPad that you couldn’t do with any other device?  Is it not at best just the mildly useful status symbol to a generation that fetishises technology for technology’s sake?  Please, let’s have some perspective; after all, nobody ever found a cure for cancer using an iPod shuffle.

Secondly, there is the well-worn phrase of having the ‘world at our fingertips’, or as I prefer to think of it, the world having you at its fingertips.  In a pre-smart phone era, if you wanted some peace, all you had to do to ensure no contact with the outside world was ignore your incoming calls or texts; switch to silent.  Now, with emails and Facebook alerts all filtering through to one device, people are almost forced to slavishly respond anytime someone hiccups in cyberspace.  But ‘oh’ I hear you cry in indignation ‘getting an email to your phone is no different to receiving a text’ and you would be perfectly valid in asserting this, however, the human mind can only take so many pings or buzzes before it has to check who’s been poked or what the latest ‘reply all’ email from the craft society says.  We are primitive beings when it comes to shiny things that go ‘bing’, and I’ve seen even the most logical person light up internally when their phone goes off; it makes us feel wanted, so much so that if we aren’t constantly bombarded we start to feel inadequate.

Another facet to this is the harnessing of the instant method of contact by businesses, so that something which is supposed to make your life easier complicates things by further blurring the boundaries between leisure and business.  How can you ever switch off and enjoy yourself if you’ve got a device that means you are permanently accessible?   If your method of contact with your bank and your employer depends on this one device, then it does become a fifth, very demanding, limb.  Furthermore, I’ve yet to find anyone to use their iPhone to do anything more remarkable with this power than cheat unsubtly at the pub quiz.  The gadgets produced by Apple have changed the world we live in, and Steve Jobs can quite deservedly take the credit for building one of the modern world’s most successful businesses out of almost nothing, but I think people needs a reality check if they think that the world is wholly a better place thanks to them.  After all, yes, we do have the world at our fingertips, but what do we use it for?  Angry Birds.