As the flurry of activity and opinions surrounding the life and legacy of Steve Jobs starts to die down, one paragraph stands out for me as a profound analysis of his impact and contribution.  Not from a Christian source, but from the Jewish author, Howard Jacobson, writing for the English Independent.  It is the conclusion to an article entitled 'A gadget may be wonderful -- but it's just a gadget'

Jobs might have made the light of common day shine brighter, and he is due great credit for that, but he didn't turn our eyes towards another reality or change the way we see the one we know. Thereafter, if those cultists who will queue through the night for whatever Apple produces next persist in their idolatry, we may have to remind them that our sense of desperate alienation when they fail is a degrading consequence of his marvellous inventions, that the being iTuned day and night is a diminution of one's humanity not an enhancement of it, and that the democratic conversation to which his gadgets grant universal access has turned out to be an opinionated, vitriolic babble compared with which the Tower of Babel was a model of enlightened discourse.

In other words, Steve Jobs was the great facilitator in our day of Pascalian distraction/diversion.     For those of us who love our iPads and iPods, that is a very sobering thought.