Mother Theresa is dead.

Wait...correction. Steve Jobs is dead.

You would be forgiven for thinking the former were true. Now before this blog post sinks totally into mean-spirited contrarian bullshit, let me make a few things clear.

Steve Jobs did more than almost anyone else in the past 20 years to change the way that the world looks at computers and consumer electronics. The effects he had on the industries of design, engineering, manufacturing, and even film and music will not be accurately comprehended for some time.

Now, notice I said "effects". Not "improvements". Fact is, Steve Jobs was a force of nature. But every force of nature has a good side and a bad side. Wildfires leave people homeless and charred, but they clear the forest so new trees can grow. Steve Jobs revolutionized the way we compute, even the way we interact. But as this article points out, this was at the cost of being a downright awful person half the time.

He verbally and one could argue emotionally abused his employees to get results...he vehemently denied fathering his first child, lying outright and saying he was sterile. And his company, running under his instructions and abiding by his own revolutionary business practices currently holds thousands of children and other innocents in its factories in China, where they toil in conditions not much better than human bondage. This is not even touching the other things the article charges Apple with, such as having a generally ruthless and Gestapo-like legal team.

I'm not trying to shit on Steve Jobs' memory. I'm not trying to simply spit in the face of such a flood of positivity. But I am sure as hell trying to make the memory everyone remembers the memory of what actually HAPPENED, not some romantic but utterly false saintly chronicle of his life and person. And any time somebody who influenced a lot of people dies, there's always the danger of that happening.

Steve Jobs was a person. A great person, a powerful person, a force for change in this world. But whether those changes are good or bad cannot be measured from one standing so close to this time. We will need the distance of years and perspective to accurately judge and appraise Jobs' legacy.