There is tiny triangle in Northern Italy, roughly between Florence, Venice and Como, where there is more concentrated skill and capacity to produce fine mechanical things per capita than anywhere else on the planet. The operative word is fine. This is where industry goes for both precision and artistry, not just precision or artistry.

Factories in the area make parts for cars, buildings, dams, trains, boats and all variety of machines and useful things and send them everywhere.

These workers and their special skills stand in the five hundred year old shadow of Leonardo Da Vinci, the great thinker and doer. His ideas live today in the work these Italians do.

He envisioned pumps and lifts and transmissions. They still make pumps and lifts and transmissions.

We may have met our own Da Vinci in Steve Jobs.

It is hard to deny that Jobs' ideas have broken new ground. The real question is what people will be doing with them five hundred years from now. Like Da Vinci, Jobs has given us more than products; he's given us new skills and new ways of thinking. He leaves us with tools that can help us to be happier, and more useful, and more cooperative, and more thoughtful, and more peaceful. Let's hope that we, like the Italian metal workers, put them to good use for a long, long time.