When I read “Steve Jobs” the biography written by Walter Isaacson, I became extremely
fascinated by the term “Distortion
of Reality”, the phrase coined and intended for the visionary and icon, the
late Steve Jobs who might not have
possessed the best interpersonal
management skills but all that was compensated by his ability to take art
and technology to the level
which his team would not have attained without his resolve and vision.
“Steve has a reality distortion
field. In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of
practically anything. It wears off when he’s not around, but it makes it hard
to have realistic schedules,” said the former
Apple software engineer Bud Tribble who had adopted the term “reality distortion field” from "The Menagerie"
episodes in Star Trek series to describe the phenomenon with Steve Jobs.
"The reality distortion field
was a confounding melange of a charismatic rhetorical style, indomitable will
and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand," said Andy Hertzfeld a fellow Macintosh team member . "Amazingly, the reality
distortion field seemed to be effective, even if you were acutely aware of it.
We would often discuss potential techniques for grounding it, but after a while
most of us gave up, accepting it as a force of nature."
So often we talk
about how one must be realistic in
one’s expectation and knows one’s limitations. Here is an icon in every sense of the word believes
that “Nothing is impossible” and pushed his team ahead and accomplish what they
had thought was impossible and arrive at what they eventually produced. However
the reality distortion field concept could inspire and challenge the individual
into doing what he or she would not have thought possible thus bringing about
positive advancement and innovation; it could also trick people into believing
something that is completely untrue , in other words, a lie in which
case might possibly bring about disastrous results
that would not be of use and may even be destructive. We therefore must be aware
that the power of our minds are capable of distorting reality in more than one
way . At the end of the day it is with conviction and determination that one
will triumph .
Art has been an
area where one can freely express one’s perception of life and happenings around the world. As the saying goes:
“ Life imitating art or art imitating life”. It is commonly understood that the film makers produce movies
which are in many ways reality distortions. I remember being told by a
classmate that her strict dad would never allow her to go to the cinema and apparently he said, “ the moviemakers are mad and the movie goers are idiots.”
Perhaps he wanted his daughter to stay grounded and not be influenced by what
is depicted by the script writers after all life does not end like a movie
script . Maybe he did not want his daughter to have misconceptions about life
or distorted views of the reality. He must have thought that cinema was a mode of reality distortion.We were in primary school and even then I
felt that it was unthinkable to be deprived of movie going. As a child, I used
to look forward to family outings to the cinemas and I would be in tears when my
parents and I could not catch a movie as the tickets had been
sold out. It might sound trivial
and me appearing spoilt that I should sulk when our movie trip was cancelled. I
grew up watching movies and love the cinemas; movies take you places visually and
emotionally and an enjoyable social outing. Movies and fictions serve our palates for fantasies and fantasies rarely become reality although some of the images and scenes presented by the
film maker could bear some resemblance to real life and our experiences. But what my schoolfriend’s
dad must have meant was : Movies are illusions and he did not want his daughter
to be deluded or have a false perceptions of what reality was.
In films, the morality line may be blurred or re-invented. That is why we have rating for the movies
so that the individual can take responsibility for what his or her child can
watch. In the world of cinema,
lots of stuff are not factual and for artistic and creative purposes, even
official history may be changed to suit the design and ideas of the movie
directors and sentiments of the respective scripts. We watch films not in
search of the truth, we sometimes watch films to escape from reality and be
amused or find humour in the absurdities about life while at other times we
hope to be inspired. Bearing that
in mind, why was my friend’s dad so adamant and insistent that those who watch films were fools? Guess
it is not easy to be a parent, you have no idea when a child can distinguish
what is real and what is not. Video games are popular and can be addictive. I
have heard about real people who find their “soul mates’ through playing
computer games and getting to know each other through the characters they were playing
as. Perhaps my school friend’s dad did have a point after all. We cannot be guilty of indulging in a little imagination but sometimes the sheer mental force
can carry our minds so far out
that the thin line between what is real and what is not real somehow is displaced.
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