How Steve Jobs and Apple turned technology into a religion

[cbayer]

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-how-steve-jobs-and-apple-turned-technology-into-our-religion-20130829,0,5589343.story

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An ad for the first iPhone played off the Bible's "Doubting Thomas" story. (Apple)


By Chris O'Brien
September 1, 2013, 7:00 a.m.

Decades after Apple's founding, we've grown used to referring to lovers of the company's products as a "cult." The devotion of customers to Apple products has long been the envy of competitors for its fanatical fervor.

It turns out that the religious intensity with which people follow the company is not entirely by accident. In a new book, "Appletopia," author Brett Robinson examines the way that Steve Jobs drew on religious metaphors and iconography to elevate his products specifically, and technology more generally, into a kind of religion.

"The creative rhetoric around Apple's technology has favored religious metaphors," Robinson said in an interview. "Some of it is conscious on Apple's part. Some of it is unconscious."

Robinson is a visiting professor of marketing in the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. The book grew out his dissertation and a course he taught on religion, technology and marketing.

more at link

[ElboRuum]

1. iZombies. Cool. (nt)

[BlueStreak]

2. He should have gone all the way, getting tax-free status

Apple is every bit as much a religion as most religions (in America) are corporate enterprises.

[cbayer]

3. He would have to have filed as a 501(c)3 (non-profit), and that seems

highly unlikely.

[BlueStreak]

10. Why not, if the teabaggers were able to get it?

Apple is more of a religion than the Tea Party.

[cbayer]

11. Not the point. There is no way Steve Jobs would have had a non-profit.

The teabaggers would.

[BlueStreak]

12. jobs ran it like a non-profit, hiding many of his profits in Ireland.

Why not just make it official?

[cbayer]

13. Jail?

[Jim__]

4. The 1984 commercial doesn't really have a religious theme.

Or, am I missing something:

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[cbayer]

7. The article links it to the enlightenment.

The enlightenment was an element, Robinson says, of Apple's famous "1984" Super Bowl commercial, in which a female runner throws a hammer that smashes an Orwellian figurehead on a giant screen. Instead of a fiery explosion, the drones looking on are bathed in bright light as they seem to awaken and stir.

[Jim__]

14. Wouldn't that be an anti-religious theme?

Not that's it's a big point. It just seems like an unusual selection in an article on religious themes. I did love that commercial when it came out though.

[cbayer]

15. There was the theme of simplifying religion - ridding it of it's political complications, IIRC.

I loved the commercial too, but I've loved lots of their ad campaigns.

I had the opportunity to visit a few genius bars lately. Someone really should make a documentary. They are fascinating places.

[Dawson Leery]

5. A downfall in product quality would not deter those who belong to the

Apple cult from continued business.

[cbayer]

8. They lost me for a period of time.

It had more to do with incompatibility than anything else.

But I came back as soon as they had adequately addressed that.

And I am definitely a devotee.

[Ninga]

6. I am an iNut, my husband, not so. He spends waaaaay more time

with technical support than he should, and especially since he is a techie and wiz at computing.

The OS was the best, and to this day, is waaaaay more dependable than what ever that window my husband is staring through.

Just sayin.

Sign me,

iNinga

[cbayer]

9. Lol! Same in our house.

I have to giggle under my breath while he waits for his device to come up or shut down...

or when I hear screams of frustration from the next room as he gets yet another blue screen of death.

He has finally bought an iPhone, but it didn't come easy.

[gopiscrap]

16. and that is fucked up and one of the reasons why our prirorites are so screwed