A short, nerdy exposé on the iPad

Totally love the idea of scrap computers used as a mid space. I hope the iPad does a good job at fulfilling this as I’d love one in that case. Put into a proper context this little guy is looking more and more appealing.

8226:

To my tech friends: (with and without a capital ‘T’). I was struck today watching the announcement of the iPad, that Apple is fulfilling the rather specific prediction of tangible/ubiquitous computing forefathers Hiroshi Ishii and Mark Weiser of MIT.

In his Sept. 1991 paper titled “The Computer for the 21st Century”, Mark Weiser identifies the following characteristics of future computing. Note the description and names of the things too (tabs=iphone, pads=ipad, boards=_______)

“The Computer for the 21st Century” by Mark Weiser

Summary: Make computers an invisible part of people’s life by seamlessly integrating them into the world.

• divert attention from a single box (like a monitor) and make the system aware of its surrounding
• create tabs, pads, and boards that scale in different sizes (from post-it sizes to blackboard sizes)
• pads are a cross between paper and laptop (think of them as “scrap computers”)
• they need to be cheap, low- power computers (this is easy for the smaller tabs, not so easy for the bigger ones)
• they also need to have software for ubiquitous applications and a network that ties all the tabs together but this is a bit difficult right now with operating systems that don’t have different hardware & software configurations for changing surroundings
• this type of ubiquitous computing will prevent information overload and make more information available at our fingertips at any time, anywhere