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A little over a year ago, I wrote about the keynote address by Apple CEO Tim Cook at Duke University. At the time, I was not really impressed – his speech was, as I wrote, "as close to reality as you will likely be able to find," with its plethora of abstract self-naming -assisted, its thoughtful tricolons and its slightly naff dynamism for Apple products.
Now he had another bash – this time speaking at Stanford University. The place highlights what critic Harold Bloom called "the anxiety of influence," the Oedipal struggle of a writer with a strong predecessor. It's at Stanford that Steve Jobs, Cook's predecessor at Apple, has delivered one of the most famous launch speeches of recent times.
Mr. Cook directly addressed this point and used the speech as a means both to take advantage of the authority and to change the words of Jobs.
Fourteen years ago, Steve was on this stage and told your predecessors, "Your time is limited, so do not lose it in someone else's life." Here is my corollary: " Your mentors can leave you prepared, but they can not leave. you are ready. "
This speech was much more coherent thematically, much more personal and much more effective than that given by Mr. Cook to Duke – his rhetorical ornament did not spread like jam, but was used for a specific purpose. He also avoided giving a direct impetus to Apple; to have recognized, perhaps, that nobody responds well to a speech that they think is trying to sell you something.
Much attention has been paid to the pace and form of sentences. "Our problems – in technology, politics, wherever they are – are human problems." "It's our humanity that has put us in this mess, and it's our humanity that is going to have to take us out." "Caffeine and code, optimism and idealism, conviction and creativity."
And the three breathtaking rehearsals of this speech, two portions of anaphora followed by an epistle, have led him to highlight the idea that, in the words of Spider-Man's uncle Ben, great power great responsibilities.
We see it every day now, every data breach, every violation of privacy, every blind eye turned to hate speech. False news poisoning our national conversation. The false promise of miracles in exchange for a single drop of your blood.
Think about what's at stake. Everything you write, everything you say, every subject of curiosity, every wandering thought, every impulsive purchase, every moment of frustration or weakness, every grievance or complaint, every secret shared in trust.
In a world without digital privacy, even if you have not done anything wrong to think otherwise, you start to censor yourself. Not quite at the beginning. Just a little, little by little. To risk less, to hope less, to imagine less, to dare less, to create less, to try less, to speak less, to think less.
The central metaphor of Mr. Cook was the idea of building – "be a builder," he said, allowing his specific remarks about Silicon Valley to be more widely seen by the many listeners who would not join to the technology sector. It was well chosen. The advantage of this metaphor is that it puts emphasis on cooperation over time, which constitutes the basic theme of any keynote speech or other speech of exhortation.
"Builders are convinced that their work in life will one day be greater than themselves. They are aware that its effects will extend over several generations. This is not an accident. In a sense, that's the essence, "Cook said.
There is a stylistic echo of this notion in its language itself, the figure of anadiplose, where a clause passes from hand to hand: "their work in life will one day be greater than they – greater than every person"; or, as elsewhere, "associate this ambition with humility – a humility of intention".
Build, take responsibility for what you build and transmit things in the future: these were the topics addressed by Mr. Cook. He brought them together – gave them a literal and personal incarnation – in his latest employment anecdote, broadening the line I quote above. on the difference between "prepared" and "ready". "When Steve got sick," he said, he had never really imagined that Steve would actually convey the company. "And when he was gone, really gone, I learned the real visceral difference between preparation and preparation. It's the loneliness I've ever felt in my life. "
Jobs built something, the speech says, and he passed it on. The jobs formed an idea, the speech said, and he passed it on. And here was Mr. Cook conveying the same idea; as Yeats says: "The words of a dead man / are changed in the guts of the living."
Mr. Cook's peroration went awry, you see, in the form of a sudden series of abstract names that he finds so hard to resist: "Find hope in the unexpected. Find the courage in the challenge. Find your vision on the lonely road. But he saved it with something much better and sharper, something in a familiar human voice: "There are too many people who want credit without responsibility. Too many people come to the ribbon cutting without building anything important. "
I think that he has built something worthwhile in this speech. Good work.
Sam Leith is the literary publisher of The Spectator and author of You Talkin 'To Me? Rhetoric of Aristotle to Trump and beyond. . .(Profile books)
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