Something unexpected came out of Vox Media’s Code conference Wednesday — a birth announcement for The Steve Jobs Archive. The new repository celebrates the Apple co-founder’s life and strives to share his values. Various programs are planned.
In a panel discussion, Apple CEO Tim Cook, former design honcho Jon Ivy and Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, discussed the man’s legacy and introduced the archive.
The Steve Jobs Archive strives to share Apple co-founder’s values and ‘sense of possibility’
During the wide-ranging panel discussion at Code, Powell Jobs took the lead introducing the new archive at stevejobsarchive.com.
“While we do have some artifacts and some actual real material, the archive is much more about ideas,” TheVerge quoted her as saying.
She added the archive is “rooted in Steve’s long held notion that once you understand that, outside of the natural world, everything in the built environment and all the systems that govern our life on the planet were built and designed by other humans.”
“Once you have that insight, you understand that you as a human can change it, can prod it, can perhaps, interrogate it and stretch it,” she continued. “In that way, human progress happens.”
Tim Cook’s tweet about the archive follows along the same lines. “Steve’s legacy lives on in the company we are and the products and services we create. The Steve Jobs Archive was created as a place to spark a sense of possibility in everyone,” he wrote.
Steve’s legacy lives on in the company we are and the products and services we create. The Steve Jobs Archive was created as a place to spark a sense of possibility in everyone. https://t.co/MfgMuGV8IX
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) September 8, 2022
A work in progress
The archive itself is by no means comprehensive yet. But it includes statements from Jobs in written and recorded forms.
They come from interviews, events and even Jobs’ emails to himself. They tend to reflect what Powell Jobs said above regarding Jobs’ appreciation for others’ accomplishments and sense of the future’s possibilities.
“One of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there,” he said at an Apple meeting in 2007, for example.
And the About section at the bottom of the homepage makes this statement suggesting the archive will grow:
With respect for the past and excitement for the future, the Steve Jobs Archive offers people the tools and opportunities to make their own contribution.
We are building programs, fellowships, collections, and partnerships that reflect Steve’s values and carry his sense of possibility forward.
