Steve Jobs has passed to spirit. Another number in the massive death tolls that cancer has amassed in all of our lifetimes.  I think of cancer and HIV as kin, I look to a future when science eradicates the physical and emotional suffering that both bring to our species...

Thank goodness for all of us that Steve Jobs was someone who could look to the future.  His keen eye for technology, and how to implement computers into our daily lives, has made life a lot easier for those of us privileged enough to own the fruits of his labor.  I remember the first time a computer crashed into the Decker household.  It was the Apple IIe (“two E”).  I must have been 9 or 10- I can remember the thing sitting on a table, just on the threshold of the living room since our home didn’t have “an office”... in the 1980’s, no one’s home had an office.

Why bother?

The first question my brother and I had was whether or not that thing could play games.  It could. That meant that it was love at first sight for me and computers.  In a couple of years, the games were so good that I skipped school to play them after my HIV diagnosis.  The real connection to computers came when that thing launched me from my own home to the world around me, when I posted a webpage onto the internet and disclosed my HIV status at age 20.

Without visionaries like Steve Jobs, that desperate escape from my pet virus and the ability to launch it like a space rocket would not have been possible.  And for that I am forever grateful.

Positively Yours,
Shawn