I’m not a Luddite. (I haven’t even stepped foot in an English mill.) But it is the day after Steve Jobs brought the tablet down from the mountain and I don’t feel like the future is at my fingertips — yet.
The iPad is great device for consolidating my movies, music, books, magazines, newspapers, and the Web into a sleek and stylish silicon invention. But it’s still an iPhone on steroids.
I plan to get an iPad, because if I have to carry electronic devices, I like the idea of having one that can do it all. Bit like having a Swiss Army Knife compared to having a knife, can opener, scissors, saw, screwdriver, file, etc, etc.
But I don’t see how it is going to dramatically change my life except for the fact that having a touch-screen interface will make me feel like I’m a passenger on the Millennium Falcon watching the stars whiz by and chatting with my own protocol droid.
Well almost. The iPad is still light years away from an android that has a human form and can accompany me like my very own neural shadow.
If technology really wants to dazzle me, then create me an android with built-in apps, a beautiful face, a colorful binary system of wisdom and humor, and an oracle operating system.
Or an iPaw. A bio-engineered hand that can pleasure me. And instead of buying apps, you can purchase lovely fine-grain leather gloves for it. And instead of downloading movies, it’s got its own built-in memory of good moves. And instead of connecting to the Web, it connects directly with your pleasure zone. And instead of having a digital library at your fingertips, you have fingertips at your beck and call.
And I do wonder what the iPad will do for the future sales of books. Ebooks are priced so much less than their paper cousins, it makes me wonder what electronic books are going to do for authors who want to make a living from writing. Are writers going to earn even less? Will writers become the factory workers of the Internet Revolution?
Now onto the body politic.
I, like my fellow countrymen, listened to the State of the Union address last night. I am constantly surprised by how Obama, even with rhetoric, can persuade me that everything is going to be OK.
And what the hell is with the GOP? They all looked like assholes. Were they doing that intentionally? They looked so glum and sour and old and uninterested in doing a thing but sitting on their laurels. Is that the image of government they want to portray? One of relics who are apathetic even about opposing and putting up a fight. They could have at least booed. The role of politicians as statues is frightening. It makes me think that they are capable of nothing and are all lazy, well-paid bureaucrats.
But then it still amazes me that anything gets done in government when such a huge ideological chasm exists between conservatives and liberals. I know I can never be swayed or even convinced by conservative principles. How do they do it?
Now onto the human body.
NPR has a section on the Rembrandt drawings at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Wow. And to think he just quickly sketched them. Amazing. www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122954481
Allister Timms 