Scrawled in Wax

Perhaps it’s just me, but I think that Apple keynotes and the buzz that surrounds them are: a) a strangely pleasing (and increasingly rare) collective experience; b) among the most fascinating cultural moments of the contemporary age. The breathless excitement, the hyperbolic, histrionic reactions, good and bad, the desire, the lust, the defensive need to deride – GOD! – the sheer mad rush of it all. It fascinates me and has for a long time.

That said, I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that, after the dust settles, the reactions that follow these kinds of events can often feel stale and tired. While I agree that there is always cause for skepticism when a corporation launches new products, ones we may or may not need, at the same time, we have recently seen companies introduce what almost amount to new cultural forms – or, at the very least, new cultural containers. To react to these events solely from  leftist wariness, a resistanc rooted in ludditism or a strictly market-based perspective – well, more than anything, it just feels disappointing. Narrow. The status-quo.

Fortunately, for every ‘my moleskine is good enough’ tweet and Blodget-esque post on sales projections, there are people writing who, to me anyway, have a decidedly broader, more intriguing perspective. And interestingly, what some have focused on isn’t so much the possibility afforded by the iPad itself, as the potential for newness in a touchscreen tablet, roughly the size of a sheet of paper, that you can hold in your hand like a book, magazine, slate or sketchpad. It’s this simple physicality (but not just that) that seems most promising.

First up (and, for this blog, most predictably) is Snarkmarketeer Robin, who I sorta’-but-not-really prodded to respond to the iPad. He gave just the kind of answer I expected – and I mean that with all the admiration I usually direct his way. And I think where it ends is most interesting, because what Sloan demands is that new forms create new content:

For all its power and flex­i­bil­ity, the web is really bad at pre­sent­ing bounded, holis­tic work in a focused, immer­sive way. This is why web shows never worked. The web is bad at con­tain­ers. The web is bad at frames.

Jeez, if only we had a frame. [...]

In five years, the coolest stuff on the iPad shouldn’t be Spider-Man 5, Ke$ha’s third album, or the ePub ver­sion of Annabel Scheme. If that’s all we’ve got, it will mean that Apple suc­ceeded at invent­ing a new class of device… but we failed at invent­ing a new class of content.

In five years, the coolest stuff on the iPad should be… jeez, you know, I think it should be art.

Joanne at Tomorrow Museum adds to this notion by suggesting that the limitations of the iPad that are being used to condemn it elsewhere are, in fact, a benefit.

Here is the slow web in effect. The opportunity to focus on the one task at hand. Combined with the intimacy of the device, we’re going to see an entirely new way of interacting with information.It is a more reflective way, one that might even correct some of the signal-to-noise issues we’ve for so long taken as a given of the digital age. [...]

I actually prefer my iPhones inability to multitask. It’s putting a constraint on me… and my worst multi-tabbing, unfocused habits. If I can’t so easily navigate to another app or another page, I won’t.

The iPad is effectively dividing two experiences: reading and writing. This means actively listening to another person’s words, and having the time to think of what to say before typing. This is better communication. This is the future.

[Emphasis mine]

Now, what Shirky says is true: part of the web’s grand potential lies in the fact that the former consumers of media are now producers of media. But the tablet produces a space in which one can read and watch and listen without the constant, jittery potential to react immediately. And it’s not that one wants to do away with that; our laptops and desktops are still here. There’s still a benefit to that kind of immediacy and ebb & flow. It’s that something like the iPad creates a form that, at least at this point, seems to allow for a greater emphasis on aesthetics, whether that’s language, the visual, the aural, or some combination we haven’t envisioned yet.

But though we can’t quite envision everything that tablets and touchscreens will one day do, I’ll end with some good guesses that rethink the place of both frequency and print.

But of course, as for my take on the notion of the tablet?… Briefly:

• Networks are the future – and networks are composed of nodes. But the fun part is that the malleability of a touch-screen interface means that a tablet can be a node for a variety of different networks: a home theater system; a collaborative art project; a museum guide; a new kind of concert experience – anything, really. The adaptability of a screen that you can touch and manipulate means that a tablet is, rather than a new product like a TV or a radio, is instead part of the blank infrastructure waiting to be filled with ideas.
• My most recent post was very clunky and vague, but what I wondered there was how forms may change not so much in response to material shifts, but in a changing relation to structures of knowledge – perhaps even the idea of structures of knowledge themselves. So I still wonder what the truly ‘interactive’ magazine that seems well-suited to the tablet will look like if, for example, the magazine is no longer for ‘telling you about the world’.
• Terribly anecdotal and personal, but I’m still excited about the iPad specifically for the same reason I was when the rumours first surfaced: it’s the perfect thing for my 71 year old Dad. While there are good reasons to decry Apple’s closed system, there’s something to be said for the computer that is just a consumer electronic device that anyone can use. Sure it’s limited and no Flash is just dumb; but I could email my Dad things to read; he could watch YouTube clips of Qawwalis; or obsess over Google Maps by looking at the layout of Punjab or the hill stations he grew up in. That seems ideal, particularly if part of the forward movement of tech is expanding its reach to groups that may otherwise be excluded (though no, I’m not insane, and the irony isn’t lost on me: I totally agree with Anil’s point that Apple “explicitly don’t give a shit about poor people”)