Dead men sell no heretical iPhones, By Mark Morford
Every notable death begets an invitation.
Every time a person both famous and groundbreaking, both pioneering and a little bit incendiary exits this earthly plane -- sometimes too early, sometimes unfairly, sometimes without, it seems, having enough time to finish their grand or devious work -- we who like to follow such energies often turn our faces up to the gods of fate and time and utter the same entreaty:
"Who, pray who, can possibly replace X? Who is the next who can possibly give us the same energy, verve, wild imagination as Y? Is it even possible? Was X so unique as to never really be replaceable? Is the culture at large not tangibly diminished by Y's departure?"
We cry out, mostly seriously and only semi drunkenly, "Who is the next Steve Jobs? Where will we find another of the notorious intellectual fire of Chris Hitchens? What of someone precious and rare like the humble revolutionary Vaclav Havel?" On it goes. ...
(Full URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/12/21/notes122111.DTL&nl=fix)
