The future of computing?
factore.ca
factore.ca
That may be what most people do with their computers anyway, but with computers, a small fraction end up tiptoeing into deeper water and really harnessing the capabilities there for creative expression. The iPad makes that next step impossible. Nobody is going to be banging out a novel on it or learning how to program.
Time will tell, but I'm pretty sure Apple is just fine with the idea of people using the iPad to purchase music, movies, TV, and games...
Personally, I'd be more concerned that this new generation of texters, tweeters, and Facebook wall-posters doesn't have the attention span and grammatical capability to write a novel, regardless of what physical tools are available to do so. I was surprised at how many of my classmates freshman year of college were found lacking in the area of writing skills, and I don't imagine the pervasiveness of terse, abbrievieted, and often shallow communication is improving that.
Do you really think writers are going to get any real work done on an iPad? Because if so, I really disagree. The touch screen simply doesn't lend itself to quick typing and rapid text editing.
Ignoring artists, designers and musicians - since, after all, most people are none of those - and focusing on writing, I think the iPad has a chilling effect. Writing is perhaps the most important activity the average citizen conducts online, so that matters. People kept writing that the iPad is a computer for mothers - my mother, like many others from her generation, was taught to type, a skill that served her well as a legal secretary. She types very well now.
Given an iPad, I expect that although some tasks may be easier for her to accomplish, her lengthy email missives to her children, and her letters to the editor, are going to be much briefer. That's a loss to her family and a loss to civic society.
Of course, none of that matters if you look at the iPad as a toy, a sketchpad, or a device mainly intended to consume media than produce it. But if you believe that it is the "future of computing", as many call it, then this is a problem.
The iPad may well be - and probably is - the future of content consumption, web browsing, gaming, and perhaps television viewing. There's a difference between that though, and the future of computing.
One of my favorite iPad features is that Pages goes into WriteRoom mode in the landscape orientation.
> The iPad may well be - and probably is - the future of content consumption, web browsing, gaming, and perhaps television viewing. There's a difference between that though, and the future of computing.
I think this is a great point, and couldn't agree with you more. In the midst of media frenzies, where the echo chamber (including company marketting departments) starts throwing around terms without regard to the deeper implications of them, it can be easy to forget that "computing" is a lot of things. When someone is writing a novel in a nice word processor or emailing photos to a friend, that's part of computing. So is designing a video game, programming a utility software, and editting music. "Computing" is a lot of things, and it certainly doesn't just mean crunching numbers in a programmable calculator, as it used to way back in the day. I think that's a part of what's bothering people when the iPad is referred to as the future of computing: it implies that all the other stuff that the iPad omits isn't computing. But to say that the iPad has no place in the future of computing is to make the same mistake in reverse (you didn't say that, but a lot of people have made comments in that vein).
From my perspective, saying the iPad is the future of computing is no worse than saying that some new octo-core, power-guzzling chip is the future of computing, or that voice interface is the future of computing. That chip won't be so nice in a low-power netbook, and I wouldn't want to dictate my code to the computer when I could just type it. But all these technological innovations and products have a place in the ever-changing landscape that is computing. And by providing more devices that sit in different niches and excel at different things, with either broad capabilities or limited ones, we are succeeding in the goal of expanding what is possible within the sum total of activities that is "computing." As long as we keep doing that, we keep adding to that nebulous idea that is the future of computing.
Consider the situation, say, 5 years ago. We all watched TV. That's consume-only; no user production involved. We all read books. Same deal. Radio, newspapers, etc. All the same. But, we all also had computers, and we used to them to produce, interact, etc.
The point is that we used a number of devices, we did some producing, but mostly we consumed. Now, perhaps a few years from now, when newspapers, radio, etc., are all dead, we will do all this with just one or two devices. But we should still expect each individual to do a lot more consuming than producing.
(Note: This is not to say I'm happy with the Apple/Amazon-runs-the-show model of computing. I don't own a Kindle, or an iPhone-OS-anything. Nor do I intend to get one.)
At some point the supply for all these aggregators will run low (not disappear, of course) and we'll see a rise in the number of people that author content. And so on and so forth.
The iPad is the symbol of that trend, but otherwise is tiny, irrelevant, even.
The internet used to be a bunch of interconnected machines doing peer to peer communication. Now, we have a few servers and many many clients. So the future already there. I believe we could reverse the trend and go back to a sane, mostly decentralized, internet, but it will require a collective effort.
Do tell... it seems quite easy and affordable to run your own server now. A VPS can be had for under $50 a month, and if you really need the whole machine, $200 would probably do it. What am I missing?