True freedom is not just freedom to do something it can also be freedom from something. We are not truly free if our freedom is based solely on rights with no regards to responsibilities. There are many people who just don’t get that but fortunately for he and his family, Steve Jobs does.
Jobs, the founder and CEO of Apple Computers, has recently taken a very controversial stand. He has instituted a policy that prevents pornographic images from being sold through the apple device app store. This means that pornographers cannot create and sell applications through the online store that provides millions of apple device users with their entertainment and productivity programs. Commenting on Jobs decision, Eric Felton of the Wall Street Journal writes,
“Apple impresario Steve Jobs is preparing to overturn one of the most basic assumptions of modern technology–that the computer business is built on pornography.”
Jobs has poised he and his company to demonstrate to the world that the pathway to consumer computing and online success does not have to lead through the pornography studio.
What is Jobs motivation? Has he discovered some business model that promises loads of cash by setting himself at odds with the skin trade? Why is he taking such a principled stand? To answer these questions you don’t have to look any further than an email exchange between Jobs and Ryan Tate, a gossip blogger for the online site Gawker. Tate wrote to Jobs complaining of his decision against pornography in his email he stated,
“If Dylan was 20 today, how would he feel about your company?… Would he think the iPad had the faintest thing to do with ‘revolution?’ Revolutions are about freedom.”
Jobs reply to Tate reveals a counter to Tate’s definition of freedom. Jobs wrote,
Is Apple about freedom? “Yep, …freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin’.”
In response to Tate’s assertion that pornography is just fine, Jobs wrote that Tate,
“might care more about porn when you have kids.”
So Jobs tips his hand and in so doing highlights a very important distinction between freedom from and freedom to. Any self-indulgent, libertine can exercise freedom to but it takes character, discipline, and sacrifice to practice freedom from and to provide the benefits of freedom from for others.
I have become a huge apple fan for purely utilitarian and selfish reasons. Jobs stance, however, gives my loyalty to he and his company fresh wind. Mr. Jobs is to be commended for his stance and I hope that families out there in the consumer electronics marketplace will reward his altruism. For now, he has earned it.
HT: Al Mohler
I am so thankful that Mr Jobs has taken this stand and we should all stand b ehind him.