You Know What's Weird?

This is gonna be a quick one.

It is weird to me that maybe the strangest thing about a piece of technology as advanced as the iPad is how completely isolating it feels. I can support this with evidence to a certain degree, but at the heart of it it's just a palpable sensation: with this device, I am not merely focused on one application at a time. I'm not just reinventing my ideas about multi-tasking.

I am actually cut off slightly from life around me.

Sure, I can use the internet, and - for the most part - it's going to do what the internet does best. But when it glides me to new site after new site, it opens new windows that are, esentially, new applications. I can be logged in to my instant messenger, but I don't actually see it's there. I can check Facebook through the web or Twitter through an app, but the act of checking them is as purposeful as checking them on my phone while I'm stopped at a light on the sidewalk, and I retain just about as much knowledge. Most apps don't have built-in share functionality, and the ones that do of course have to bump me out of their environment in order to punt me anywhere I can tell all of my friends.

It's a little weird and a bit hard to explain, but I have to say, it feels surprisingly lonely. It is still possible that this is a good thing.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad