Ubergeek Jobs joins the pantheon of childhood heroes

My eight-year-old nephew is going to go to school as Steve Jobs, complete in little black turtleneck and jeans, with the Isaacson biography under one arm. It's a school assignment to learn about, and to come to school as, someone famous that you admire.

Of course, as a doting tech writer aunt, I want lots of photos of this trem- endous moment in his school-going career and, as an admirer of most things geekish, I am proud he chose Jobs as someone in whom he is interested in and admires.

Yes, there are the difficult elements of the Jobsian personality, but then that was his complex adult persona, not part of a life that is visible, or matters, to children.

Of course, most heroes have feet of clay. I think our societal expectations that they do not is what makes public life extremely difficult for too many. But that’s a different topic.

I’m more interested in the idea of a young child choosing a mega-geek as hero. I don’t think that would have happened even five years ago, not in the case of most kids, anyway – not unless that person were in the guise of some other, more traditionally sexy job, such as an astronaut.

If you’re an astronaut, you are going to be by any definition geeky, but most of us don’t realise that until we are grown up ourselves.

I think Jobs now qualifies as a hero to the under-10s because the point has been reached where digital devices are so ubiquitous that kids don’t even think, “geek”.

They think, “cool guy who creates cool stuff that I like”.

That transition had already happened if you worked, say, as a computer special effects animator in the film, television or games industry. I mean, being able to do that kind of stuff requires a pretty jaw-droppingly talented level of geekiness, but the end result – what we all see and think of when we hear of anyone is this profession – is cool and sexy.

By contrast, people who think up computer design or software programs don’t generally excite hero worship, except when others get old enough to really understand what they do and generally if people have a particular interest in that area.

In short, if they are themselves a geek.

I sure don’t think this is fair. Anyone who has read some of the fantastic histories of the broad technology industry, or who has heard some of the great figures in the area speak, knows there are plenty of heroes in a very exciting frontier of discovery.

I will happily confess that one of the great joys of my own job (and the part that always makes me feel incredibly privileged) has been to be able to interview some of these people and hear first hand about what they do and how they did it.

But technology makers and doers – outside of the Apollo-era astronauts – sparked little interest in my childhood head.

What is it about Jobs that appeals to the kind of sports-mad, outgoing child you would think would (like the majority of boys in his age group in surveys) be picking a sports figure as hero or a celebrity entertainer?

To some degree it will be Jobs’s own celebrity late in life, and his highly public death (for children my nephew’s age, perhaps the thing they will remember is “where were you when you heard Steve Jobs had died”, just as it was John Lennon, Elvis or JFK for previous generations).

But it is also that Jobs was so intrinsically tied to devices that truly shape and connect deeply to the lives of these kids, of this era.

Not the Mac – that was the device for my generation. Not even the iPod, which came into being just ahead of the Born Digital generation and whose functions are being gradually subsumed by smartphones and tablets.

Instead think iPhone – and iPad. (“Your big iPhone”, as my nephew called it initially when asking to play with mine.)

And more critically, the groundbreaking touchscreen interface that little hands and young minds immediately “got” – often well before their elders.

I watched my nephew’s hands surf across the surface on these devices when just a toddler, like so many other adults, marvelling at how second nature a touchscreen quickly became to young kids.

Jobs was both the face of Apple and its products, while transcending them to become a figure instantly recognisable in his own right.

Few company leaders, much less technologists, achieve that level of popular visibility. To my mind, no other ubergeek has.

How cool that Jobs can join the hero pantheon for a eight-year-old. March into school in your jeans and little black turtleneck, Zack, and be proud, be very proud.