The world has lost a true visionary. You may find a wonderful tribute to Steve Jobs over at Apple Insider. Jobs indeed left a legacy of “applied technology that shifted the course of human progress in dramatic ways.” He wasn’t just a programmer, or simply a designer or even a marketer. He was all of those things. He had the grand vision of how things should work and be, and he had the personal gifts of perseverance and strength to gather the resources to see his vision to fruition. In some of the tributes that I read yesterday, some writers mentioned lessons that Steve Jobs taught us. A couple important ones were that new ideas and true vision don’t come from focus groups. And another one was that you can only connect the dots by looking back, not forward. One added lesson is to never be afraid of failure.

Thank you Steve Jobs for not only giving us wonderful products and films, but for showing us how science can blend with the liberal arts to enrich our lives. I think an early Apple slogan says it best: “Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Like most avid readers I’m sure, I like to visit the homes of famous authors. But as April Bernard asks in this piece titled “Here’s What I Hate About Writer’s Houses" from the New York Review of Books, just what are we looking for?

“Here’s what I hate about Writers’ Houses: the basic mistakes. That art can be understood by examining the chewed pencils of the writer. That visiting such a house can substitute for reading the work. That real estate, including our own envious attachments to houses that are better, or cuter, or more inspiring than our own, is a worthy preoccupation. That writers can or should be sanctified. That private life, even of the dead, is ours to plunder.”

However, for those who wish to continue their visits to their favorite writers’ homes, Bernard recommends the website, writershouses.com. One of my favorite visits has been to Mark Twain’s boyhood home in Hannibal, Missouri.

If you really want to get close to a former writer’s home, consider buying Truman Capote’s townhome in Brooklyn Heights. It’s been on the market for well over a year.

For $2.5 million you can own Norman Mailer’s last home, his apartment in Brooklyn Heights. Mr. Mailer died in 2007, but since that time his apartment has remained as it was when he lived there. From the New York Times: “Now Michael and his eight siblings have put the apartment, a fourth-floor co-op overlooking the Promenade, the Statue of Liberty and the harbor framing the skyline of Lower Manhattan, on the market for $2.5 million and hope to share the proceeds. They have not quite decided what to do with the furniture, books and tchotchkes, but will probably divide them up. Yet, Michael Mailer said, they may be open to offers for some belongings from, say, someone planning a Norman Mailer Museum.

“‘It’s a tough thing to sell a family apartment because there are so many memories,” Mr. Mailer said. “A lot of us are not eager to sell it at all. It’s an unusual place and only someone with a particular sensitivity and style would buy it. If you’re a family it’s probably not very practical. It’s a dangerous place.’”

Take a tour here.

Some fascinating new research has surfaced as the how language first developed and evolved. According to a recent article published in Nature, language has not developed on a linear path like scholars have always thought. From the story in Wired:

“It’s widely thought that human language evolved in universally similar ways, following trajectories common across place and culture, and possibly reflecting common linguistic structures in our brains. But a massive, millennium-spanning analysis of humanity’s major language families suggests otherwise.

“Instead, language seems to have evolved along varied, complicated paths, guided less by neurological settings than cultural circumstance. If our minds do shape the evolution of language, it’s likely at levels deeper and more nuanced than many researchers anticipated.

““It’s terribly important to understand human cognition, and how the human mind is put together,” said Michael Dunn, an evolutionary linguist at Germany’s Max Planck Institute and co-author of the new study, published April 14 in Nature. The findings “do not support simple ideas of the mind as a computer, with a language processor plugged in. They support much-more complex ideas of how language arises.””

Language, it seems, develops “from more general cognitive capacities.” An interesting book published on the subejct a few years ago examines this very topic: The First Idea: How Symbols, Language and Intelligence Evolved from our Primate Ancestors to Modern Humans. The book talkes a wider view beyond just language development, but perhaps the entire story is still being written.

This video touches me every time I view it. Taken from a documentary called Playing for Change: Peace Through Music, musicians from around the world play together on a rendition of Bob Marley’s classic call for world peace, One Love.

Go Twins!

I like this story. In an effort to reach more readers, Dick van Tol opened this traditional library in libraries in busy airports. Sanctuaries of peace and quiet in a most busy space. Van Tol, works for the nonprofit ProBiblio, which aims to help support libraries. In an effort to reach more readers, van Tol opened this first-ever Airport Library. According to the story, it seems to be working. This modern-looking library located in Shiphol airport outside Amsterdam offers readers 1,200 books in more than two dozen languages. From the story:

“Between Piers E and F and alongside the airport branch of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, the collection is meant to be read on site and left on the shelves for others to browse. The library plans to offer e-books and music by Dutch artists and composers that can be downloaded, free, to a laptop or cellphone. The library also is equipped with nine Apple iPads loaded with multimedia content, including photos and videos, that is likewise devoted to the theme of Dutch culture. A digital guest book invites visitors to jot down their musings or leave messages for wayward companions.”

Once again this year, Roger Federer has entertained the crowds at the U.S. Open with another amazing shot, made to look easy.

Is editing set to make a comeback? Let’s hope so. From the Atlantic: “The Internet can feel like a jungle, and journalists are in the business of providing paths through the territory. Writers might blaze the trails, but editors maintain the roads.”

Alexis Madrigal makes the case that editing could follow much the same path as desktop publishing has since the mid-1980s. When desktop publishing tools first came out, everyone thought they were designers. But in recent years consumers have come to realize the importance of good design. Design (good design) is best left to the professionals. And now hopefully the same can be said of editors. In recent years, editors have been undervalued. They were deemed expendable and as a result they have been disappearing. “Text goes online with less editing than it did at magazines or newspapers. More and more of us writers are working without regular editors. More and more people are writing without ever having been edited. Maybe now people will realize what editors did: their presence will be felt in their absence.”

Madrigal quotes writer Paul Ford on what I believe to be a very good description of what editors do. “Editors are really valuable, and, the way things are going, undervalued. These are people who are good at process. They think about calendars, schedules, checklists, and get freaked out when schedules slip. Their jobs are to aggregate information, parse it, restructure it, and make sure it meets standards. They are basically QA for language and meaning.” Here here.

The photo shows the editing made by a well-known editor to one of his recent speeches: President Barack Obama. Another example of editing here.

For more on the topic, check out this interview with Mary Norris, a copy editor who has worked at the New Yorker for 31 years. “I have been on both sides of the process, as a writer and as a query proofreader. Being edited sometimes felt like having my bones reset on a torture rack. I don’t ever want to do that to a writer, but I probably have from time to time. “What is this, the adverb police?” a writer who shall remain nameless once said in my earshot. “You betcha,” I wanted to say. I don’t remove every word ending in “ly,” but I like economy and concision.”

This is one of my favorite Apple commercials. It tells the story. It makes you feel that you are joining a group of free-thinkers who want to change the world. “No respect for the status quo ... About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them, because they change things. They push the human race forward.”

Apple - “Crazies" from AdGiant on Vimeo.