iPad and computing history
(a response to Cory Doctorow's Why I won't buy an iPad and you shouldn't either)
Cory Doctorow's parents bought an Apple ii. Luxury! At $1700 in the late 70s, there was no way.
The iPad is not alone, it's part of the infrastructure. It does suggest a scary vision of the future when no one can tinker, but guess what; practically no one does.
The browser has Javascript, which is much more capable than the Basic my ZX80 had. It didn't even have memory mapped graphics.
When was the last time you tinkered with a laptop? My surface mount skills aren't there.
There's a nice bit in Vernor Vinge's Fast Times at Ridgemont High (iirc) on the frustration of not knowing how anything works.
It's fear-- fear that cool computing is getting even more marginalized.
But it's not computing. People don't want computers.
Why couldn't HyperCard be on the iPad? It's not a full interpreter. HyperCard in JavaScript. The web.
Mark Bernstein's The iPad is not a Computer gets it right, I think.
Tags: computing
