Frozen Transparency

I recently stumbled upon this YouTube video, which is of Steve Jobs first presentation at MacWorld after having been hired back into Apple. It’s been eleven years since then, and it’s interesting to watch it purely in terms of history.

Just a few thoughts:

• I hear it in his voice, and I see it in his smile, but it’s hard for me to imagine that as Steve Jobs. He looks so young!
• We often forget that it was Microsoft that bailed Apple out back then. The stock was later sold, but it forms an interesting dynamic in the history between the two companies. Has the student now become the master—or does Microsoft actually want Apple around?
• I thought Powerpoint presentations made today often looked bad. Those slides are horrendous.
• He was a smooth performer then, but he’s gotten even better as the years have gone by.
• Apple really hasn’t changed since Steve Jobs took the helm again. They’ve just gotten popular.

In my eternal travels on the Internet, I eventually stumbled upon this blog entry, or more accurately, to the YouTube video that it talks about. I think it’s interesting to watch. Art History people, of course, will have orgasms. As for myself, I found it more apt to compare the early painted portraits to pictures like this one or this one, which are probably not as touched-up as paintings were (due to the nature of photography), but still indicate to a large extent our idea of beauty. The thing to notice in the transition from the Mona Lisa to a picture of Jessica Alba is the change in the level of sexuality—or rather, how it is expressed. The Mona Lisa has cleavage, but Jessica Alba has her (zip-up) shirt wide open. Standards change over time. Sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes it isn’t. I’m not sure we’ve had a good enough dialogue as a culture to figure out which it is in this case. I have recently been reading a fair amount of Jennifer Roback Morse. Does it show?