Steve Jobs tells a rather simple story of a machine that was born as a human being – and wanted to invent other machines like him – and find a way to make the humans love those machines. Jobs is a modern day Pinocchio, or perhaps rather Pinocchio crossed with Gepetto, he wants to be a real boy but he also wants humans to love his fellow machines, by making them shinier and friendlier. He blames Hollywood for making computers scary things – and now they’ve gone and made him a scary man, although it’s up to debate how much help he needed on that front.

His most human moment is perhaps also his most machine-like, when he tries to explain his earlier folly it comes down to a heartbreakingly simple line: “I was poorly made.”

Yet perhaps the bigger story is the story of a world where those who succeed have done so precisely by turning themselves into robots like Jobs. Those are also the only stories that writer Adam Sorkin can make believable, because normal people don‘t speak like he writes. They don’t speak and think this fast, they don’t multitask like the heaven is going to fall in five minutes. But tech wizards, businessmen and politician just might.

Ásgeir H Ingólfsson