With all due respect to your contribution to current technology, I think Jobs can and probably should be compared to Edison or Tesla, not because he did the sam

With all due respect to your contribution to current technology, I think Jobs can and probably should be compared to Edison or Tesla, not because he did the same kind of work (he didn't) but because he illustrates the shift in the quality of important achievements between T/E's era and ours, and performed an equivalent role in helping bring about the core developments of our time. In Tesla and Edison's case, these core developments involved the application of novel principles and the development of radical new core technologies. In Jobs' case, this involved tying together all the strands of post-WWII technologial innovation into one streamlined package, creating an aura or mystique, and dragging the mainstream of society online. Once people like Tesla and Edison fill out the core innovations at a certain level of technology, the important next step becomes working out what to do with those innovations at a higher level of abstraction. Jobs' was active several steps up the abstraction ladder. An important part of what he did was simply accessibility or marketability. Forgive me if this sounds like I am diminishing the role of relatively pure technical work and innovation (work which Jobs certainly made the most of and largely did not contribute to directly from my understanding) but making technology attractive and accessible was a very important step during this period. Jobs' work may not have the romance of Tesla or Edison, but from what I've read it sounds like he was an exceptional (if very lucky) individual who combined a certain vision (of course continuously evolving) with a certain aggressive determination to realise that vision (catalysed by the incredible opportunities he was given in life). He was a different man, not better or worse (though maybe less romantic) to suit a different time.