The Magical World of the iPad

You know what the iPad reminds me of? There was a feature on older Macs, circa System 7, that restricted users to a simple panel of applications and files, preventing them from getting into the guts of the software. (It was used primarily in schools and for "kid-friendly" home computers.) The iPhone, and now the iPad, seem to be run according to the same principle.

Not that that's a bad thing: The iPhone and, by all accounts, the iPad are beautifully designed and capable of making everything from video to web browsing to reading e-books a blast. No one should expect anything less of Apple, after all. But I think a lot of the anxiety you hear in those criticizing the iPad (e.g., Mark Pilgrim) comes from a fear that Apple is leading the charge toward the infantilization of the average computer user: The iPad, among other sins, is locked down and restricts the users from adding any applications that don't have Apple's approval; nor can you access the core functions of the iPad via the command line, as you can on OS X.

But how different is this, really, from the situation for the average computer user today? From the beginning, Apple has been all about making computers and devices "for the rest of us," and the progress of computer technology over the last 30 years has been in line with that mission -- hiding the complicated and just giving us the simple. And it's been wildly successful: Whether you use a Mac, Windows, or Linux machine, a GUI is now the standard manner of interacting with a computer; moreover, most people, I'd wager, only use a few applications, mostly pre-installed, in their daily use. To be sure, Apple is being overprotective in embracing, for the iPad, the walled garden model that it has used for the iPhone. But fears that the iPad's arrival spells the end of the culture of hackers seems, at this point, overblown. Hackers and tinkers are already a minority among computer users, anyway, and I doubt the iPad will exacerbate that dynamic.

On the other hand, the folks defending tinkering aren't wrong, in the general sense that it's somewhat disturbing that so many people in our society are using devices that they neither understand nor care to understand. We're all guilty of this, in one way or another: John Gruber's comparison of the iPad to the automatic transmission may well be correct. Not knowing the intricacies of a modern car doesn't impair one's ability to function in society, any more than not hunting for or growing one's food does. But simply being aware that the things one considers conveniences are in fact the products of generations of effort, ingenuity, and expertise is, I think, salutary. At the very least, it helps one avoid the mindset of passive consumption that modern society can fall prey to. Clarke might have been right that a sufficiently advanced technology is no different than magic, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing to accept that as inevitable.

If You Don’t Slow Down, What’s the Point of Winning

Elizabeth & the Catapult: "Taller Children"



Discovered via thesixtyone, possibly the best music site to appear since Pandora.

So Much for Question Time

Lots of bloggers are cheering President Obama's impromptu debate with House Republicans in Baltimore today: Besides the thrill of seeing Obama parrying the usual GOP attacks with aplomb, the whole exchange was reminiscent of the highly entertaining Prime Minister's Questions in the UK. But it looks like that won't happening again, as the GOP is now regretting having cameras at the meeting. Even if they did allow cameras in the future, though, I doubt that the sort of unscripted debate we saw today could survive in the American media landscape. The cable news networks seem to like reducing debate to dueling talking points, and pundits and politicians for the most part oblige. And while Obama dove into the debate with enthusiasm, too many politicians, Democratic and Republican, aren't well-prepared to do what he did: It's not merely about intelligence or rhetorical skills, but about refusing to reduce things to sound bites and talking points. There's a reason most Presidential debates, for example, feel more like a press conference than an actual contest of ideas.

Friday Video

La Roux: "Bulletproof"



For comparison's sake, here's the new Tron trailer:

The Federalist and the Filibuster

When talking about the filibuster, it should be noted that the Articles of Confederation, which preceded the Constitution, were eventually thrown out in part because it had a supermajority requirement in order for Congress to do anything. Alexander Hamilton excoriated the defenders of this practice in Federalist 22:

To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser. [...] The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good. And yet, in such a system, it is even happy when such compromises can take place: for upon some occasions things will not admit of accommodation; and then the measures of government must be injuriously suspended, or fatally defeated. It is often, by the impracticability of obtaining the concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction. Its situation must always savor of weakness, sometimes border upon anarchy.

Hamilton obviously had in mind war or insurrection when talking about emergencies, but one could argue that fiscal crises, from ballooning health care costs to California-style budget problems, also qualify.

Hamilton also attacked the Articles of Confederation for their undemocratic character, as members of Congress were apportioned on the basis of states, not population. But of course, the only way to get the Constitution ratified was to have a state-based legislature, along with a population-based one. So now we have a Senate that, over the years, has become increasingly captive to a supermajority requirement. It's like the Articles of Confederation had never even been repealed.