Remember on Monday when we mentioned a couple of recent awards that had been chucked in Uncle Steve's general direction? Well, faithful viewer Ricardo Salvador chased down one more to toss on the pile: the 2003 Scientific American 50 List of Winners has been published, and Steve wins in the Business category of Communications. Why? Because he "started an online music service that serves as a model for the rest of the record industry."

He did? Man, you learn something new every day! Say, now we know where Apple got the idea for the iTunes Music Store! And here we thought it was so gosh-darned original...

Okay, so we're being just a wee bit of a collective wiseass, here, but it's to raise an interesting point. (We promise.) If you look at the other winners in the list, you'll notice that they tend to be organizations, not individuals, unless the listing was indeed celebrating the accomplishment of a specific individual-- for example, Fernando de Castro Reinach, who "started biotechnology companies that are trying to improve Brazilian crops." The companies are working on the crop issue, but Scientific American credits Reinach for having started said companies in the first place. In contrast, Intel wins in the Computing category. Not Craig Barrett-- Intel. So why is Steve getting all the credit for starting the iTMS?

The way we see it, there are two ways to interpret this development. The first is to assume that Scientific American is being exceptionally insightful in recognizing that the real challenge in creating the iTMS was not in clearing the technical hurdles (which were substantial), but rather in persuading the Luddite and piracy-paranoid recording industry to license out its music in downloadable form, which it had previously resisted like grim death itself. In other words, Scientific American realizes that any big tech company could probably have come up with something approximating the iTMS's actual store (only, you know, suckier), but it was Steve's communication skills and Reality Distortion Field that actually gave the store something to sell.

The other interpretation is that Scientific American has stumbled upon one of the best-kept secrets in all of high-tech and inadvertently blabbed it to the whole world: Steve Jobs is Apple Computer. And not in a synecdochic sense-- literally, Steve is it. All those other 10,210 employees? Nothing but hired actors, paid to prop up the illusion of a vibrant, churning tech company alive with the blood of thousands of talented and enthusiastic individuals all contributing to the greater good; in reality, Steve is all and all is Steve. He runs the whole show. He's the CEO, sure, but he also writes all the software, designs all the hardware, answers all the tech support calls, makes the coffee, sweeps the floors, and does security patrols at night.

Now, it just so happens that we know which of the two above scenarios is true, but we promised not to tell, so you're on your own from here on out. Don't bother asking; we're sworn to secrecy.

Oh, all right, here's a hint: we hear that once he even fired himself in the elevator.