Can you hear the clanging bells, the raucous crowds, the clicking keyboards? Because that’s the sound of our readership racing to their computers to get their first morsel of Arteculate! That’s right folks — it’s opening day here at the internet’s latest webzine (don’t call it a blog; we already tossed two interns’ applications for that kind of language), and we’d love for you to join us for a delightful little piece about some possible long-run implications of a little gadget that was released last Saturday.
By now, every avid follower of the technological world has played with, touched, seen, or at least read reviews of Apple’s iPad. We feel that it’d be neglectful of us here at Arteculate not to make some mention of the iPad, although the dust still has yet to clear from last weekend’s launch. And with Apple reporting that it’s moved more than 300,000 iPad’s in the device’s opening weekend, things are certainly looking bright for a gadget that just months ago was welcomed by a merely lukewarm reception. This should probably be taken as a sign that idiot-simple intuitive interfaces are the way of the future, signaling the beginning of the end for the mouse-and-keyboard interfaces we’ve been used to for almost 30 years. From a more dystopian point of view, it may also mean the end of an era for uncensored computing; if Apple’s iPad starts capturing a significant following of users (a plurality of users in the United States within five years is not out of the question), then Apple will find itself in an optimal position to make its App Store censorship less of an inconvenience and more of a policy initiative on behalf of a private company.
Maybe it’s just the editing staff here at Arteculate, but we’re a little sad to read people’s declarations of iPad-like devices being the way of the future. Oh sure, they’re great hybrids of phones and netbooks (tweens if you will… or won’t, thank God) but that doesn’t make them suitable for people’s primary computers. Trading a desktop or laptop for an iPad is like telling society that you’re done contributing — you just want to consume. And while many users are already mere consumers of digital content, taking away a user interface that some may deem a dinosaur in today’s computing space is going to lead to an even smaller proportion of the computing population actually knowing how to do anything constructive on their computers. Everybody is going to expect everything to be served to them on an electronic silver aluminum and glass platter. So while we still might have to ask our girlfriends how to get things done in Photoshop (Aaron, we’re looking at you), at least we know our way around. The same kids who might have grown up to be just like us (to their parents’ chagrin), if born today, might never become content producers. Instead, the iPad and it’s coming brethren will lead them on a computing path that, while having no learning curve, fails to force them to think creatively.
And now back to the scary side of things: what happens, hypothetically, if the App Store becomes the distribution method for software? It’ll be great from an ease-of-use standpoint. There will be no more going to the store, no more hunting around the internet to find the right piece of software, and probably less piracy as a side benefit. However, Apple has the final say on every program that finds its way into the App Store. If the App Store is no longer a secondary software source, and the iPad has been adopted en masse as people’s default computing platform, then Apple controls what software people get to access. We’re not saying that Apple’s an evil company, and far from it. But something seems wrong about Apple being allowed to filter users’ content like this, and it’s the kind of problem that policymakers ought to start thinking about before things have a chance to spiral out of control. Hopefully the free market will prevent this sort of market domination and censorship (and upcoming competition from Google’s Chrome OS and Microsoft’s Courier concept seems likely to do just this). However, just because a new device seems like a “computing revolution” does not mean that it has everybody’s best interests at heart; people must be aware that not all revolutions are good thing.
I really liked this first post, and I think it shows what a valuable direction the site’s going in. However, I disagree with the problems you foresee the iPad posing. Sure, it might lead to fewer users knowing how to use an “old-school” computing platform, but who’s to say that these users won’t be even more creative than current users? Also, I don’t feel that Apple’s “censorship” is a danger to society; it’s more like making sure that everybody remains courteous.
I guess it’s a game of wait and see, but I sure hope you’re wrong!
As an admittedly lazy tech consumer, part of me likes the idea of a computer that knows “what I want.” Hey, less work for me! But this makes me think about what’s happened with, say, politics (probably the epitome of taking the back seat). This idea that politicians always know what’s best (or at least that a sort of capitalized system of competition where the best will conquer and make good decisions) is clearly false a lot of the time. The financial deals underlying political decisions, the compromises that happen behind close doors, etc., lead to a world that we are only superficially knowledgeable about. What compromises will we make with this new era of technology, and even more so, what compromises will we make unknowingly? Scary…