Comments on: iPad the Spork

By: Dylan Lopez

Dylan Lopez — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 04:44:10 +0000

my ipad have some display problems and i cannot fix the damn thing *,,

By: Mads

Mads — Mon, 10 May 2010 10:04:49 +0000

I’m curious why people suddenly will become passive, cultural dupes – is reading, watching, appreciating, suddenly a passive activity? Why is close and concentrated engagement with a product suddenly considered culturally inferior to pseudo-active “social” media use? I’d like to think that the “passive” or, as I would have it, engaged or attentive mode of consuming is the prerequisite for actual participation – i.e. you have to consume knowledge before being able to change, challenge, reproduce, or participate in knowledge creation.

That, and we can see the iPad as a possible platform for DIY publishing – ie. when the hardware on which you consume Penguin books is no different from the one on which you consume a self-published text book, I think people will be inclined to produce high-quality stuff too.

All in all, I see it as a brilliant form factor for consumption and as a supplement to tools for making – also, will it not bring the long tail of fringe productions closer to a general public rather than the twittering Linux, CC obsessed social media crowd (of course, that would challenge our right to complain about the passive “crowds”…)

By: andrew

andrew — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 17:59:17 +0000

Werdna: I consider it lean back in terms of ergonomics and OS function. It doesn’t have a keyboard to hunch over, so you’re certainly not leaning forward, because you’re not at the ready at the keys or mousepad. It’s also not multitasking and the entire experience is controlled by the content creator, so you have nothing to do but completely focus on exactly what’s in front of you. For those reasons, I do wind up using it much more in “lean back” mode.

By: andrew

andrew — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 17:56:32 +0000

Pfctdayelise, the lean-forward vs lean-back paradigm is something talked about much in the interactive television space. Perhaps I thought it was more widespread than it is, because I thought I was restating a well known model!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_television

I think until now everyone thought of it as old media (lean back) vs new media (lean forward), but the iPad is new media AND lean back, which throws folks for a loop.

By: Ella

Ella — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 17:10:54 +0000

That’s ingenious, Andrew! It really is the best analogy of iPad I’ve ever heard!!!

By: pfctdayelise

pfctdayelise — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 13:25:31 +0000

Andrew is this “lean forward”/”lean back” analogy yours? I quite like it and might borrow it

By: Andrew Garrett

Andrew Garrett — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 05:31:45 +0000

Can somebody please explain to me what it is about the iPad that is so “lean-back”? I’ve seen it echoed around the web, but I’ve never seen any justification for the comment.