Malcolm Gladwell is a smarter man than I am; which is why the zombies will eat him first. And his big brain didn’t stop him from being wrong about Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs earlier this week, when the New Yorker staff writer spoke at the at the Toronto Public Library’s Appel Salon.
"Gates is the most ruthless capitalist, and then he wakes up one morning and he says, 'enough.' And he steps down, he takes his money, he takes it off the table. I firmly believe that 50 years from now, [Gates] will be remembered for his charitable work, no one will even remember what Microsoft is. And of the great entrepreneurs of this era people will have forgotten Steve Jobs. Who's Steve Jobs again? There will be statues of Gates across the third world.”
Three words for Gladwell: Atilla the Hun. Who is better known, Albert Schweitzer or Thomas Edison? Father Damien or J.P. Morgan? Steve Jobs wasn’t a great humanitarian*; but what does not being a great humanitarian have to do with being particularly forgettable?
*although Jobs' products did, in fact, make many lives better.
