1) It could have been nothing more than a hallucination brought on by some combination of medication, extreme stress, and oxygen starvation as the brain starts to shut down. Such cases are well known in the medical literature.

2) Even if he was seeing a vision of some supernatural afterlife, “wow” would be an equally understandable reaction for seeing any number of different things that human beings have imagined, and millions that we have not.

Of course, in a Christian society the assumption is that it must be the Christian vision of Heaven (or Hell) that Jobs was seeing. I see that merely as a failure of the imagination.

Well it was pretty obvious that you were (to me anyhow). Though no one ever asked me directly I always assumed that I was seen as one. The mods changed over time on that forum… I think I was a member since, at least, mid-2005 (before the Dover decision was handed down). There were some good people on it from time to time. There was one guy who went by the handle jhud (Jack Hudson) who was very very active. He actually knew some biology and was a good debater. He could get quite fired up and the mods would never touch him. I think I really got to him once and the mod at the time chewed him out. I wish I had saved that thread but it was disappear-inated by the mods. The deleting of entire threads or sections of threads was one of the most irritating things about that forum.

Back to Steve Jobs:
I have never been as big a fan of Steve Jobs as the press has been recently (or his fans constantly.) I watched this last weekends 60 Minutes program with the author of his biography. Some of the stuff they said really irritated me. For instance; When they said that Jobs was the only one to even think of the idea of seamless service and application integration. Which is demonstrably wrong! What would have been true is that Jobs was one of the first people with the opportunity and will and, most importantly, position to actually make that happen. Yet he also did it at the cost of choice for the consumer. You get it the Apple (Jobs) way or you don’t get it at all.
Another one is “social media.” While it is nominally true that Facebook is the dominant one at present… people have been using the internet to meet-up with friends and communicate for decades. Before Zuckerberg was even a gleam in his parents eyes we had Usenet news. Then talk, email, IRC and forums.

A far more significant contributor to our digital age was Dennis Ritchie. He died a week after Steve Jobs and barely got a mention in the news. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie

Anyhow… it is good to connect with you. If you are ever in the NJ/NY area drop me a line and I will buy you a beer (or beverage of choice) or two or three…

Hi David/Embedded — I think you are the first person to make that connection (the first who has mentioned it, at least). Did you follow a link from FreeThoughtBlogs?

I never mentioned the fact that I was an atheist on the board (I almost did in the last few days) because I didn’t want my opinions to be dismissed as those of a raving atheist troll (though I guess some did anyway) and, in fact, my political beliefs haven’t really changed since I was a Christian–I have always been a liberal. It was also quite entertaining to see people being dinged by the mods from time to time for calling my faith into question.

Anyway, glad you stopped by. I was amused to read about Jobs’ squeamishness about the on/off switch. Even if they are there, but hidden, it’s still quite an apt metaphor for how people–even most believers–like to bury their thoughts about mortality.

Yet every Apple device I have ever used has an on-off switch. Some are just hidden.

BTW, are you the same tacitus that used to post on the, now defunct, christianity/crosswalk forums?
If you are, Hi! I used to post under the handle “embedded”