Living in the Future

As the saying goes, nothing dates like the future. A number of commentators have observed how much science-fiction, especially pre-Apollo landings, imagined people living on the moon but for the most part didn't envision the evolutions in information technology we've seen in the past decade or so. Even the relatively forward-looking original Star Trek tended to focus more on macro developments like faster-than-light travel, though its nifty personal tech remains influential.

What brings this to mind for me is the iPad. Having gotten the chance to play around a bit with my wife's 2nd generation version, I feel qualified to say that the detractors are right when they say it's basically an overgrown iPod Touch. I feel similarly qualified to say that, however right their point may be, it's equally irrelevant. The iPad truly seems to be the virtually ideal computer for people who don't like computers.

Not only can it do nearly everything that non-techies like to do (e-mail, music, web browsing, etc.), using it is every bit as intuitive as the iPod Touch or iPhone if not more so because of the larger screen. For those who want more office functionality, there also seem to be applications for word processing and spreadsheets. I'm sure they're not quite as effective as desktop items like Word or Excel, but I suspect they do a more than adequate job. The only caveat I have is primarily a corporate rather than technical issue, namely Steve Jobs' refusal to integrate Flash into it. In short, this is the kind of computer space-age science-fiction implied we'd have, even if it never discussed it in detail. Because it's important that nothing date like the future, we also can rest assured that a new model will be here before we know it. After all, even the future isn't perfect.