“Thomas Edison electrocuted an elephant once. The cheery moment is captured in a classic production called Electrocuting an Elephant, a black-and-white film the inventor used as part of a lengthy marketing campaign against his commercial rival, Westinghouse, and his former protégé Nicola Tesla,” Matt Taibbi writes for Rolling Stone. “Edison was trying to prove that Westinghouse’s AC current was more dangerous than his own DC current, so he first fried a succession of cats and dogs in a sort of zoocidal barnburning tour, then finally conflagrated a Coney Island circus elephant named Topsy as part of what was, one must admit, a very inspired public relations idea befitting the greatest corporate innovator of his time.”
“When the Supreme Court of Assholedom decided to consider the case of the late Steve Jobs, we instantly collided with a problem we’ll call the Edison Conundrum,” Taibbi writes. “This dictates that the question of whether or not a person is an asshole can be complicated by the utility of that person’s assholedom.”
Taibbi writes, “In other words, if being an asshole is part of what brought us electric light, motion pictures, the phonograph, or (more pertinently) the iPhone, do we excuse the assholedom? Or do we just share in it?”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If Steve Jobs was an asshole, then the more assholes, the better.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan Kennelly” for the heads up.]
He wasn’t an asshole to everybody and not all the time. Didn’t seem like he was an asshole just to be an asshole. It was just another tool in his arsenal, used when necessary.
Only assholes think Steve Jobs was an asshole.
Here’s to the Assholes. The rebels. the troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. While some may see Assholes. We see genius. Because the people who are Assholes enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
LOL
Worst…article…ever
1
The original article comes from the Rolling Stone. The whole article is written in a humorous way. It is meant to be entertainment.
At the end, they give Jobs 3,613 “asshole” points, slightly higher than Elton John, but substantially lower than Hosni Mubarak… And Edison, mind you, gets 5,629 points (for frivolously electrocuting cats, dogs and other animals). The whole article is one big joke. While it occasionally veers towards the other side of the taste border, it is still just a joke.
Agreed. A total waste of a journalist’s ink and time.
The only elephant Jobs ever set a fire under was Microsloth and look how that turned out?
I been an asshole all my life and MDM, Steve Jobs was no Asshole.
Mac Daily Muse?
Keep firing Assholes!
Non-article.
Being incisively aware and demanding does not make one an ahole.
But murdering relatively self aware animals certainly makes one an Asshole. Edison was mostly an IP thief. Many of his “wonderful” inventions were the product of other’s work. Not all, mind you, but certainly a substantial number. And those that were his were his simply by being first in a very crowded race.
You really need to down a 6-pack before reading Taibbi’s entire article.
The bottom line: the world needs creative assholes like Jobs. None creative assholes, e.g., Ballmer, not so much.
I am saddened greatly by the fact that Steve Jobs is even mentioned in the same article as that other jerk.
Thomas Alva Edison not only electrocuted these animals but went to Congress to try to have AC outlawed. If he succeeded, we wouldn’t have inexpensive AC motors that powered all the factories, we wouldn’t have electric power more than 50 miles from a generation plant, we wouldn’t have fluorescent lights, we wouldn’t have electric steel furnaces, we wouldn’t have computers, we wouldn’t have TVs, we wouldn’t have gone to the moon, etc., etc., etc.
Dont exaggerate. We would have still had all those inventions. Edison going to Congress is equivalent to Apple and everybody else using the patent system – just a legal maneuver.
I am not sure of the facts but if Edison was right about DC being safer then we would have less deaths from accidental electrocutions. Wonder what that is worth?
BTW, dont call my hero a jerk.
Well at least you know that you’re not sure of the facts. That’s a start. The next step is shutting up when youre not sure of the facts.
Edison *was* a jerk. His campaign against Tesla put us back generations in terms of cheap, universally-available electricity.
Both were brilliant men. It is such a shame that profit and fame became a bigger motivation than changing the world. Had many of Tesla’s ideas been fully realized, we would live in a very different world today…
And Edison is mostly to blame for that.
Jerk.
Topsy (the elephant) had killed 3 men. Topsy was deemed a threat by her owners and they sought her execution.
Hanging was deemed too cruel; however, the Edison’s AC current proposal was in line with the “legally acceptable” practice of human execution by electrocution.
–> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocuting_an_Elephant
The electrocution may be been less cruel than other option… it the filming & distribution of the event which was more attention seeking “showmanship” relative the to the AC vs. DC debate.
Does this an a-hole make?
Edison had a style of FUD advertising that is unmatched lol.
I bet Edison was a real dick. Would have loved to have met him. Jobs too!
I think such criticism is more appropriate of a young pre-NeXt Steve than during his iCEO era.
I also think he was more of a dick than an asshole.
I thought it was a funny article. Nothing to take serious.
I suspect, he had little time for mediocrity, crass/tastelessness, crippled visions and clueless ideologies mired with highfalutin rhetoric (i.e., OLPC) and/or hypocrisy (“open”) etc. that are the real obstacles to meaningful progress. To many of these people (i.e. MS, PC-OEMs and the IT/”anti”-virus symbiotic industries that support/thrive on them etc.) and their diehard fans/sufferers of tech equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome (i.e. the Best Buy/CompUSA/online tech support clerk, who also moonlights as the great NPC slayer of some MMOG after hours with severe Linux complex for delusional bragging rights), Steve Jobs was not just an asshole, he was the anti-Christ of technonerdom.
I feel, on that note, I’m just as big an asshole; and Steve Jobs, within his capacity and position, was remarkably self-restrained.
Steve Jobs didn’t torture innocent animals, and if he did, it woulnt be excusable simply because of who he is.
Anyone electrocuting an animal as some kind of PR stunt, should be fined and jailed.
Please don’t feed the trolls. Thank you.
Nothing excuses or justifies the animal cruelty and torture by Edison. Don’t even put Steve in that arena of assholeness. Edison’s animal abuse is a whole different realm. Makes me sick just thinking about it.
Edison as a brilliant inventor, a massive egoist compensating for his sense of inadequacy, as well as a psychopathic Marketing Moron. He was smart enough to know that long distance DC current was idiotic and impractical compared to AC current. He didn’t care. He just wanted the credit and money, despite his inferior technology.
Edison also had an obsessive hatred of the relatively sane, kind, caring, well organized and smarter Nicola Tesla. Well-adjusted talented people drive assholes out of their minds. 😈
I wouldn’t mind an “asshole” if he can make my life better and push me to realize my full potential which I did not know I have.
I despise a condescending “good doer” for giving me free lunches all the time; then he makes sure that I will be his lapdog forever.
Actually, an asshole is someone with a bottomless sense of inadequacy who overcompensates by forcing people around them to feel as profoundly miserable as they do. Never expect an asshole to push you anywhere but into your own personal hell.
People who push you to better yourself are called: Teachers.
For those who aren’t sure of their AssHoliness, the ARSE. Brought to you by Guy Kawasaki via Bob Sutton:
Are You A Certified Asshole?
I FAILed the exam. 🙁 But it shed a great deal of light upon the nature of assholes in the workplace as well as the incredible number with whom I have been most unprivileged to work. And no, Steve Jobs does not qualify.
“5 to 15 “True”: You sound like a borderline certified asshole, perhaps the time has come to start changing your behavior before it gets worse.”
But… I like myself the way i am 😉
“People who push you to better yourself are called: Teachers.”
you know, at the time you call them assholes… LATER you understand their wisdom.
Only assholes and his marketing people actually think Edison brought electric light to the World which rather devalues the whole basis of their argument or simply shows them to be assholes.
I don’t think assholedom is part of what makes these men geniuses, I think it is more of a side effect of their focus and drive. Doesn’t excuse it, but helps to explain it.