I saw my first Apple Macintosh in 1986, at the Salford University Students’ Union. It had been purchased to allow ‘desk-top publishing’ of the student newspaper. It was kept in a special room – The Mac Room – into which only a select band were allowed, as long as they brought bacon wheat crunchies and Silk Cut. It had a tiny screen, about the size of four iPhone screens put together, and it was revered like the golden idol in a Rider Haggard novel.

A couple of years later, as the chair of the National Organisation of Labour Students (NOLS) I purchased an Apple Mac to produce our ‘Labour Student’ newspaper. The staff trade unions at Labour party headquarters in Walworth Road refused to allow it in the building, because only members of the relevant union (was it SOGAT?) were allowed to operate machinery like that in the workplace. As a member of the NUJ, I wasn’t allowed to desk-top publish.

Rather than provoke a demarcation dispute, the Apple Mac lived in my rented single room in Tooting, where we would produce our pernicious Kinnockite propaganda. The combination of a confined space, cigarette smoke and ‘spray mount’ adhesive meant that during all-nighters to meet deadlines we would all be high as kites. Some of the articles produced in the small hours were pure Hunter S Thompson.

I report these Apple-related memories from a lifetime ago to demonstrate how fast the technology has changed our lives. When my eight-year old son plays games and watches Outnumbered on the iPad I tell him he and his friends will laugh their asses off when they look back in a decade or so. An iPad will seem as hilariously dated as the typewriter and carbon paper on which I first learnt the rudiments of journalism. He will look bemused when I say that computers had special rooms, or even special desks, where they lived. He certainly won’t believe it was possible to get a university degree without ever seeing the internet.

I am middle aged, and I have witnessed an information technology revolution unlike anything in human history. The pace of change is accelerating.  My eight year old has seen more technological advance in his life, than took place in the first 20 years of mine. The challenge this sets out for socialists is immense. We are the first generation of Labour party members which has to cope with such bewildering change. It’s changing the way we meet, talk, work, relax and do politics. It’s making traditional institutions such as political parties, party conferences, parliament and government look laughably outmoded, like a penny farthing in a formula 1 race.

In a couple of weeks I will be teaching a week-long course in speech-writing in London. One of the best examples of the speech-writers craft is Barack Obama’s victory speech in Chicago in 2008. The peroration is up with the greats. It is a review of American history seen through the eyes of a centenarian voter Ann Nixon Cooper, from the New Deal, to Pearl Harbour, to the civil rights movement, to the moon landings, to the election of a black man as US president. Obama makes the point that if his daughters live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? It is a question each of us could ask of today’s children.

This maelstrom of change means that the method of revisionist socialism becomes more, not less, relevant and necessary. Of modern politicians, Tony Blair is the politician who most understood the simple truth that policies are outdated almost as soon as they are agreed. His rejection of Labour theology was seen as a betrayal by some. In reality, it secured Labour’s continuation as a serious political force. The 1997 manifesto is already a museum piece. Revisionism is the means of ensuring socialist values remain constantly updated, and applied to changing circumstances. The Purple Book – the runaway political best-seller of the conference season – is the perfect example. But in 18 months time, it will be mostly out of date (sorry if you’ve just bought a copy). That’s because the world will be a different place in 18 month’s time. The government will have changed things, mostly for the worse. The economy will be different. But most of all, the technological revolution will have carried on its voracious pace. Whatever Labour has to offer the British people, it won’t be whatever we are offering today.

People are reacting in different ways to the death of Steve Jobs. Some will be wearing polo necks and jeans in tribute; others will go to an Apple store and buy a gadget. His contribution to our culture and society is immense. Even a non-techie, non-Apple worshiping household like mine can count four Apple devices in current use. But his death has made me consider the fragility of a human life, not its boundless creativity. He died of a disease we cannot cure, at an age which might have been merely the mid-point. He leaves behind his children. All the billions of dollars in the world cannot alter the sadness of kids losing their dad before his time.

So if you want to commemorate Steve Jobs today, turn off the Mac, unplug the iPod, and remind someone you love why you love them. There’s no app for that.

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Paul Richards is a former special adviser and writes a weekly column for Progress, Paul’s week in politics

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