Opinion : Steve Jobs and breaking out

I remember the first time I saw a video game in a store. It was called “Breakout.” Similar to the classic Pong game I received for Christmas last year, Breakout allows the player to play by himself. The goal was to keep your electronic “ball” in action long enough to break through a several layers of bricks.

It was the first time that I experienced the genius of Steve Jobs for myself, although at the time, his name was not yet a household word.

I did not, of course, stop to think at that store in the last 1970s, about the people who made that game, or how their work would change my life for the next 30 years.

This morning, that is what I am pondering.

Steve Jobs helped make “Breakout” for Atari. As we write about his death, it’s appropriate to remember the many ways Jobs contributed to other “breakout” technology for nearly four decades.

The people who try to count this stuff say that Jobs is the inventor or joint inventor of 317 different things, including most of the computers I ever used in my line of work. He and his company also contributed greatly to the advancement of the Internet, both through software and through making it affordable for Americans to own their own computer at home (not to mention at work and in the classroom). I have to admit that I never really got into his later inventions, like the Ipod, Ipad or Iphone. I think at some point, it would probably have occurred to Steve Jobs to invent something that would allow us to escape from technology. But he didn’t live long enough for that.

By now, you’ve probably seen or heard much better tributes to Steve Jobs, who died yesterday.

I have tried, since we started Vinton Today, to thank everyone responsible for giving us this amazing opportunity. At least chronologically, Steve Jobs is first on that list.