My Initial Thoughts on Apple’s Announcement Regarding the Release of the iPad, Viz. the High Likelihood of Its Impact As a Paradigm-Shifting, Next-Generation Appliance Poised to Upend the Traditional Notion of Computers As Per Se Computers; Plus, Educated Commentary on the Complex and Sometimes Adversarial Relationships Between Humans and the Machines That They Build to Use and to — Amongst Other Things — Build Still More Machines for Using and Building Other Machines; Plus, a Brief, but Memorable Meditation on the Importance of Careful Design, High Build Quality, Humane and User-Focused HCI Iteration Processes, and Practical Affordances in Order to Provide Users at Every Level of Expertise or Interest the Ineffable Touch of Grace and Humanity That — at Its Most Sublime — Gifts Us With a Quietly Satisfying Feeling of Total Engagement. Which Feeling Is Only Possible When One’s Tools and Technology Decisions Support an Elegant, Absorbing, and Seamlessly Friction-Free Flow State In Which One Can Utterly Disappear — In Which State One May Briefly Enjoy the Weightless Levity of Total Unity — In Which State, Rather Than Feeling One is “Doing Work,” One Mindfully Observes “Work Being Done” — In Which State Tool and Tool-Handler Are No More Distinguishable Than Those Elemental Singularities and Gapless Gestalts That Constitute Our Core Drive to Create — In Which State, Process is Product as well as Processor and Processed — Where, Like the Mythical Centaur, We Are Both/And (and Neither/Nor) Horse And/Nor/Neither Rider Nor Horse-Rider — Only Oneness — A Ride Being Ridden, the Riding Rider Is, In Itself, The Ride. The Silent Oneness. An Essay.
It’s a really nice computer. Get back to work.
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