It's exactly this, i've been thinking about this a lot lately.
I mean who is 'anybody' anyway. People talk about legacy, but I think it's just ego. They don't want to accept they will be one day gone and nobody cares, so they want to build something they think will extend there life beyond that.
But does it really matter anyway? Even the most successful of the successful, does it really matter? What about the person with the statue in the city centre? Does anyone really care? It might be a good looking statue but people generally don't care about that person, they didn't know them etc and this is all that they have become. That person is long gone and knows nothing of there 'legacy'
In the scale of the universe, you and Steve Jobs are of no real difference.
It reminds me of the starfish story, there was a young boy on the beach throwing washed up starfish back into the water, an older man approaches the boy and says 'look at all the starfish on the beach, you won't be able to make any difference, what is the point?' the young boy looks back at the man, throws the next one back and says 'Made all the difference to that one?'
In the scale of the whole universe who cares about you? In the scale of the earth who cares about you? In the scale of your country who cares about you? In the scale of your city who cares about you? In your street, who cares about you? But to the people you directly know and interact with? Who cares about the universe.
Your world is your own. Being 'average' is not really average. You can count and matter extremely by being 'average' to the people around you, rather than trying to be successful and effect things further outside of that, indeed really the only people you will truly matter to are those people, everyone else would just get an illusion of you anyway.
Despite all the messed up things about the world, perhaps of greatest comfort is the things that can make us truly happy are open to most, it's just the things that we think will that have lower availability.