The iPad Has An Evil Sword Form?
Alex Payne and a number of others are worried that the iPad is evil, in some interesting ways.
For years, me and thousands of other techies have been wondering what comes after the Personal Computer as we’ve known it. Yesterday, in Apple’s iPad, we caught a glimpse. If I had to pick one predominant emotion in reaction, it would be “disturbed”.
The iPad is an attractive, thoughtfully designed, deeply cynical thing. It is a digital consumption machine. As Tim Bray and Peter Kirn have pointed out, it’s a device that does little to enable creativity. As just one component of several in a person’s digital life, perhaps that’s acceptable. It seems clear, though, that the ambitions for the iPad are far greater than being a full-color Kindle.
The tragedy of the iPad is that it truly seems to offer a better model of computing for many people – perhaps the majority of people. Gone are the confusing concepts and metaphors of the last thirty years of computing. Gone is the ability to endlessly tweak and twiddle towards no particular gain. The iPad is simple, straightforward, maintenance-free; everything that’s been proven with the success of the iPhone, but more so.
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For now, though, I remain disturbed. The future of personal computing that the iPad shows us is both seductive and dystopian. It’s not a future I want to bring into my home.
In Kihachi Okamoto’s Sword Of Doom, a samurai, played by the tremendous Nakadai, has adopted an evil sword form, one which allows him to win in all duels by exploiting the weaknesses of his opponents, instead of relying on the purity of his own skill. This leads to his inevitiable doom. Inevitable if you’re Japanese, I guess.
When I first saw the movie, the notion that underlies it was so foreign to me that, as a teenager, I found it difficult to grasp at all. A sword form could be evil? I simply enjoyed the sword fights.
Much of the bad mouthing of iPad by techogeeks seems to have a similar otherworldly character.
On a simplistic level, I think the fear that a relatively closed device like iPad will stunt the minds of future programmers is a bit too much. We are living in a world with an amazing array of computing devices, and they all have interesting properties, which sometimes includes open programmability. And sometimes not.
It might be better to compare the iPad with a microwave or a game console, and just be happy that you can make popcorn or play Virtua Fighter II.
It’s an appliance, not a computer.
