Comments on: The iPad and Information’s Third Age

By: Bread Nail

Bread Nail — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:59:32 +0000

I do appreciate what you said: technology is at its best not when it sets us off on some isolated yet sparkling digital future, but when it connects us more fully to our humanity — to our history, our interrelatedness, and our culture.

By: Javierlucero18

Javierlucero18 — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 02:54:00 +0000

Just wondering why this article is up but there isn’t an iPad app for Open Culture. Make a brutha happy.

By: Steele

Steele — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:06:52 +0000

Back in the 80s, I owned a bookstore and watched as people spent more and more time watching videos rather than reading. Even then, we discussed the future of print and could envision a time when every book/magazine/newspaper would be digitized to read on our computers and lines would blur between text, graphics and movies. (I once tried to convince some investors to go out and purchase the digital rights from publishers, realizing that they could do so for a song — few considered the end of ink and paper 20+ years ago.) We also knew people who had worked at Xerox labs in Rochester in the 70s and had laid out the future of computers becoming portable notebooks that could be used and tossed around like schoolbooks.

That’s why the iPad as a perfect disseminator of “books” just doesn’t seem so revolutionary.

Conversely, access to the internet and its unlimited storehouse of info from virtually anywhere on the planet is the element that few envisioned. Moreover, the internet as a exchange for lousy information, unreasoned opinion, infinite blather, ultra-mundane and ridiculous images/videos, etc. isn’t something that any of us who were thinking about a future of easy access to books, news, art and movies ever considered. It is the true revolution.

It is interesting to wonder if Apple is doing a great service in this revolution by trying to figure out a way for publishers/producers/directors to make enough money so they can continue to act as an alternative set of filters to the viral popularity that now determines what many people spend their time viewing online. Whether anyone or any group should be able to trump the democratization of truth, power, culture, or taste is the story here.

By: Mike Caprio

Mike Caprio — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 18:56:58 +0000

Thank you for this excellent and thoughtful post! History gives us so much perspective and important context. Hopefully as you say the forces that strive to lock up content won’t win out and only deliver us “static” content, prepackaged for us by corporations for easy consumption… every book should be searchable, quotable, attributable. I should be able to download an electronic copy when I buy a paper one! And the device shouldn’t be crippled unduly in its capabilities solely for profit seeking, and limit its promise. I’m sure a future version will have a camera and allow for augmented reality; Apple is surely waiting to see what applications will be popular for the device before trying to add too much to it right off the bat.

By: Bill Rankin

Bill Rankin — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 04:29:43 +0000

I agree with the spirit of the critiques here, but understand that I was not intending to do a thoroughgoing critique of the the iPad. Instead, I was working to consider the future of the book and to discuss how one might evaluate one device versus another. Note that while I’m interested in the iPad’s capabilities and see it as having distinct advantages over the Kindle, for example (a device costing virtually the same), I don’t believe the iPad’s potential has been reached. Still, it’s clear that books are moving to a digital format — indeed, that they need to in order to address some of the problems of the current information age — and we need to understand some of the factors that will influence that move. Obviously, questions of rights, openness, interactivity, and cost will have to figure in, but such issues presume a platform a platform that is worth considering seriously from a technical standpoint first, and that’s what I was working to establish here. Thanks again for your comments, and I think it will be interesting to see how people and content converge around these devices.

By: Dan Colman

Dan Colman — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:41:09 +0000

The question of the iPad’s openness is certainly a valid one, and we’ll definitely explore that down the line…

By: pethr

pethr — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:14:48 +0000

Iceline, funny you failed to mention the power of traditional publishers and media over content and artists. I’m not so sure Apple is the evil here.

By: Iceline

Iceline — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:41:43 +0000

It’s sad that many of the problems Apple has generated in it’s short past with the Appstore are almost willfully ignored. I expected a more neutral and honest or at least critical view from openculture.com. I myself too have several apple computers and products. But like almost any iphone users I know, I jailbreaked it to escape the power Apple has over it’s devices. This won’t be a device where content will thrive to openness but one where every publisher has to answer to Apple or gets removed from the Appstore, as they have done it in the recent past more times then I wish to remember.

By: mr. mayor

mr. mayor — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:35:59 +0000

I like Apple (I own a Mac and an iPhone) and don’t plan on returning to PC land any time soon. But, so early in the game, does ACU need to be so slavish in its praise of the corporate monster that is Apple? Me thinks a little brake tap might be in order.