Joe Biden awards Steve Jobs with the Presidential Medal of Freedom

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steve jobs 1000x600.jpg
steve jobs 1000x600.jpg

Joe BidenPresident of the United States, has announced the names of 17 people who will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an award created by John F. Kennedy to recognize those who have made exemplary contributions to the security and/or interests of the country. Among the names mentioned is Steve Jobsthe well-known co-founder of Apple and face of the company for decades until his death in 2011.

With Steve Jobs deceased, everything indicates that it will be his family that will collect the award. The White House has explained through an official statement that “Steve Jobs (died 2011) was a co-founder, CEO, and Chairman of Apple, Inc., CEO of Pixar, and held a leadership position at the Walt Disney Company. His vision, imagination, and creativity led to inventions that changed and continue to change the way the world communicates, as well as transforming the computer, music, film, and wireless industries.”.

Steve Jobs is not the only internationally known person among those decorated by Joe Biden, since among them are the gymnast Simone Biles, the former soldier and former public servant John McCain (who died in 2018), the soccer player Megan Rapinoe and the well-known actor Denzel Washington .

And what about Dennis Ritchie and others?

Regardless of whether the recognition received by Steve Jobs is deserved or not, there were not a few who a decade ago claimed the figure of Dennis Ritchie, much less well-known and mediatic, but undoubtedly much more decisive for computing as we know it. today.

For those who don’t know, Dennis Ritchie is considered, along with Ken Thompson, the father of Unix, which laid the foundation for how modern operating systems (even the latest ones) work. He is also considered the creator of the C programming languagewhich today is still widely used in the development of operating systems and whose syntax has been imitated by many other languages, including Java, C# and JavaScript (yes, it was not the first programming language).

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In short, without Dennis Ritchie and obviously other people who helped him in his work (among them the aforementioned Ken Thompson), computing would have followed very different paths, and who knows, if it had followed another path, home computing might not would have had the same thrust.

Dennis Ritchie was not someone idolized from anonymity by a band of geeks, but during his career he received several very important awards. However, the last one he received, or at least the last one in his field, was the Japan Prize in early 2011, a few months before he died. In fact, Dennis Ritchie passed away on October 12, 2011, just a week after Steve JobsHence, some claimed his figure against that of the co-founder of Apple.

It is not about establishing the debate about whether or not Steve Jobs, individually, deserves all the recognition he has received, but about trying to establish some meritocratic criteria so that other important people in computing also receive them, but it is clear that the media spectrum is weighing too heavily on these issues.

Beyond the debate generated by the closedness of the Apple ecosystem, it is undeniable that Steve Jobs was a titan in design and quality standardsand his ability was more than demonstrated when, after returning to the company with the bitten apple in 1997 (after the acquisition of NeXT), he managed to put it back on top.