Jobs' death was really amazingly well-timed. He died just at the moment when the open communication culture he helped build was taking off. So his death (and in

Jobs' death was really amazingly well-timed. He died just at the moment when the open communication culture he helped build was taking off. So his death (and in particular the response) reflects his life's work most remarkably. For the first time in history, the death of a "great man" became almost instantly the subject of debate and analysis, conducted in thousands and thousands of blog posts, hundreds of thousands of comments, tweets and Facebook posts. The debate quickly became recursive - articles about "Why Steve Jobs was great" generate articles about "Why we talk about Steve Jobs" which in turn generates response (such as this), "Why we talk about talking about Steve Jobs." And so on. Only a year later and people are fervently discussing his legacy - having arguments in real time yet saturated with self-consciousness of history. And such discussion in itself changes the object being discussed.