Consider: If you came of age in the late 1970s or early 1980s, you likely can't remember a classroom that didn't have at least one of his creations in it. If you're 35 or younger, you've never lived in a world where Steve Jobs wasn't an American icon. If you're 25 or younger, chances are that between home, work, and school, you've used several of his products on any given day you can remember. And if you're reading this, a quick look around you will surely reveal a good number of objects, tech and not, influenced by Steve Jobs, the companies he's guided, and the people who've flourished under him.

This really hit home for me last night as I was playing with my two young children. They'll grow up in a world without Steve Jobs, but they used Apple products before they even watched TV. To them, "phone" is equivalent to "iPhone," you store music on an iPod, and a home computer is an iPad. They've never seen a Game Boy, but they frequently use an iPod touch. It doesn't amaze them--indeed, they expect--that I can tap a screen a few times and have their favorite song play in whatever room we're in. (That it happens wirelessly has never crossed their minds.) It's only natural to them that when I take a photo or video of them on my phone, it can instantly appear on our TV; and they don't understand why, when we take photos with the "real" camera, it takes so long for them to appear on the iPad. They may grow up in a world without Steve Jobs, but he'll be a part of their lives every day.

As he will for all of our lives, for it's not an exaggeration to say that Steve Jobs was my generation's Edison, Disney, Ford, and Iaccoca--flaws and all--with a little bit of Barnum mixed in. He was a giant of imagination and invention, the rare visionary who not only anticipated amazing things, but endeavored to make those things commonplace. Indeed, for all the times he took the stage to talk about magical, incredible devices, his ultimate goal was for those things to no longer be magical and incredible because they had become the new normal (though a ). His legend is dominated by the story of how he saved Apple, but his true legacy is how, in the process, he helped change much of our world--in many cases by saving technology from being too, well, technological.