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I noticed that this article on Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow, about why he won't be buying an iPad, has attracted a lot of favorable attention in the Twitterverse, as tech-related pronouncements by Mr. Doctorow tend to do. Generally everyone seems to be completely in agreement with his critique of Apple's new device as being piece of junk aimed at "consumers" rather than creators, and which doesn't do anything to inspire kids to become hackers because you can't tinker with the thing's innards. If you can't open it, you don't own it, so it goes. Screws not glue.
I understand his points, and I might agree with them whole-heartedly if I looked at these things from that point of view. But I think there is a lot to be said for a piece of technology that just works well for the user and the consumer. If I were to buy an iPad, I wouldn't dream of wanting to crack it open any more than I'd take a screwdriver to this MacBook that I am typing upon. Indeed, I'd probably be frustrated if it operated in any way other than it's intended manner. Because I am not a tinkerer or a hacker. I might be inclined to become one if I didn't have technology that worked well for me (or if I could afford to risk ruining my devices by cluelessly screwing around with them). Before I was able to get this MacBook (a gigantic, monumental investment relative to the size of my household economy), I relied on a series of PCs that failed one by one, and I wished that I did have more of that do-it-yourself know-how. But I don't. And I really just wanted something to work for me.
I had a Gateway laptop that conked out. At the time when I bought it, in 2001, it was a fancy, high-end computer and it cost twice as much as my MacBook did eight years later. But I was relatively wealthy at the time. Then, right about when I started to fall into financial peril in 2005, it failed (fried motherboard). Instead of trying to fix it, I accepted the donation of an old desktop PC that my father was no longer using. He mailed it to me in a huge box, a monitor, a gigantic tower and all the peripherals. It was a couple years older and not as nice as my Gateway had been, but it worked, and being broke I couldn't really complain. And it was with this computer that I dared to do some tinkering. It was an old enough machine that it lacked any good way to get on to high-speed internet. I managed to get DSL service to my home in 2006, and on the same day the DSL modem arrived I also bought a cheap printer. This was a sad day for a few minutes when all my new toys appeared useless because my computer lacked an ethernet port for the DSL and did not have adequate RAM for the new printer--two things that I failed to consider as possibilities, forgetting that my machine was almost a decade old and not realizing how much the hardware had advanced during those years. So, with the sense that I had a virtually useless computer now anyway, I decided that it was worth the risk to make some modifications to it, even though I had no idea what I was doing. I went out and bought an ethernet port and a RAM card, opened up the tower, and spent a few minutes installing these things, not really expecting that it would work and, in fact, assuming that I was probably destroying what little functionality the machine had left by fucking around with its guts. But it worked. Suddenly I had about three times as much RAM as well as high-speed internet on a PC that was still running Windows 98. So I got that DIY thrill of doing something like that and getting a good result. It felt brilliant. But not so much so that I wanted to be doing stuff like that all the time. It was a necessity to make my computer function in a very basic way, not a project that I was doing for the fun of it.
Well, in late 2007, that computer breathed its last. My friend Pat lent me his old PC, a giant hulking Gateway of the same vintage as the Win 98 PC that had just died. I removed the ethernet port and the RAM card from the dead PC and installed those parts in Pat's old machine and repeated my success at making an ancient carcass of a computer perform reasonably well for me. This machine was, however, basically just a big web browser and word processor and it worked reasonably well for that. But I was stymied as far as improving its performance by getting software updates or new software, because downloads seldom worked, it was a constant battle to clear viruses from it, and it was just plain slow despite the RAM upgrade. My desire to do things like start M-Brane SF had to be set aside for a while because it was simply not a powerful enough machine for my needs.
Then, in October of 2008, I got this MacBook, which I love more than any non-human, non-feline thing in my home. I'm not sure if I count as a "power user," but I do use it a lot and for a lot of uses, and it has provided me with an almost totally trouble-free computer life for the last year and a half. It's also a bit scary because I am so totally dependent upon it, that if it fails, I am totally screwed. So I guess that gets me back to Doctorow's point in his article about the iPad. I guess my beloved MacBook would also be a thing that I can't really own because I can't open it. But I really don't want to. The idea of busting open the case or changing its operating system almost makes me sick to my stomach. So I guess I'm just a "consumer" and a slavish follower of a big corporation that has decided for me how my technology should operate. But, if true, I think that would describe the vast, vast majority of all computer users and I think most of us are fine with that in the sense that we just want things to work and don't feel any burning need to muck around with fixing or altering these machines.
As for the iPad, I won't be buying one this year because I probably won't have the money to spend (or perhaps waste) on it, but I think it would be really great gadget for tech civilians like my partner Jeff to have. If I had the money for it, I'd probably buy him one because he is not much of a computer user, but when he uses one, he wants it to be extremely easy and straightforward. He doesn't write or edit photos or do much social networking. His use for a computer is confined to web browsing and the two or three emails he sends each week. Indeed, he finds the MacBook to be overkill for his own needs and gets frustrated with my usual jumble of open apps and browser tabs and files-in-progress whenever he goes to it to check his mail or look something up online. So the iPad would probably be the perfect device for him, and he wouldn't care at all about not being able to "open" it. So while I get Doctorow's point and sympathize to a great degree with the ideology of it, I don't think buying an iPad or wanting an easy-to-use device makes people who are not tinkerers or hackers or power users dumb-ass "consumers" in the way that he quotes William Gibson describing them: "something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote."
I understand his points, and I might agree with them whole-heartedly if I looked at these things from that point of view. But I think there is a lot to be said for a piece of technology that just works well for the user and the consumer. If I were to buy an iPad, I wouldn't dream of wanting to crack it open any more than I'd take a screwdriver to this MacBook that I am typing upon. Indeed, I'd probably be frustrated if it operated in any way other than it's intended manner. Because I am not a tinkerer or a hacker. I might be inclined to become one if I didn't have technology that worked well for me (or if I could afford to risk ruining my devices by cluelessly screwing around with them). Before I was able to get this MacBook (a gigantic, monumental investment relative to the size of my household economy), I relied on a series of PCs that failed one by one, and I wished that I did have more of that do-it-yourself know-how. But I don't. And I really just wanted something to work for me.
I had a Gateway laptop that conked out. At the time when I bought it, in 2001, it was a fancy, high-end computer and it cost twice as much as my MacBook did eight years later. But I was relatively wealthy at the time. Then, right about when I started to fall into financial peril in 2005, it failed (fried motherboard). Instead of trying to fix it, I accepted the donation of an old desktop PC that my father was no longer using. He mailed it to me in a huge box, a monitor, a gigantic tower and all the peripherals. It was a couple years older and not as nice as my Gateway had been, but it worked, and being broke I couldn't really complain. And it was with this computer that I dared to do some tinkering. It was an old enough machine that it lacked any good way to get on to high-speed internet. I managed to get DSL service to my home in 2006, and on the same day the DSL modem arrived I also bought a cheap printer. This was a sad day for a few minutes when all my new toys appeared useless because my computer lacked an ethernet port for the DSL and did not have adequate RAM for the new printer--two things that I failed to consider as possibilities, forgetting that my machine was almost a decade old and not realizing how much the hardware had advanced during those years. So, with the sense that I had a virtually useless computer now anyway, I decided that it was worth the risk to make some modifications to it, even though I had no idea what I was doing. I went out and bought an ethernet port and a RAM card, opened up the tower, and spent a few minutes installing these things, not really expecting that it would work and, in fact, assuming that I was probably destroying what little functionality the machine had left by fucking around with its guts. But it worked. Suddenly I had about three times as much RAM as well as high-speed internet on a PC that was still running Windows 98. So I got that DIY thrill of doing something like that and getting a good result. It felt brilliant. But not so much so that I wanted to be doing stuff like that all the time. It was a necessity to make my computer function in a very basic way, not a project that I was doing for the fun of it.
Well, in late 2007, that computer breathed its last. My friend Pat lent me his old PC, a giant hulking Gateway of the same vintage as the Win 98 PC that had just died. I removed the ethernet port and the RAM card from the dead PC and installed those parts in Pat's old machine and repeated my success at making an ancient carcass of a computer perform reasonably well for me. This machine was, however, basically just a big web browser and word processor and it worked reasonably well for that. But I was stymied as far as improving its performance by getting software updates or new software, because downloads seldom worked, it was a constant battle to clear viruses from it, and it was just plain slow despite the RAM upgrade. My desire to do things like start M-Brane SF had to be set aside for a while because it was simply not a powerful enough machine for my needs.
Then, in October of 2008, I got this MacBook, which I love more than any non-human, non-feline thing in my home. I'm not sure if I count as a "power user," but I do use it a lot and for a lot of uses, and it has provided me with an almost totally trouble-free computer life for the last year and a half. It's also a bit scary because I am so totally dependent upon it, that if it fails, I am totally screwed. So I guess that gets me back to Doctorow's point in his article about the iPad. I guess my beloved MacBook would also be a thing that I can't really own because I can't open it. But I really don't want to. The idea of busting open the case or changing its operating system almost makes me sick to my stomach. So I guess I'm just a "consumer" and a slavish follower of a big corporation that has decided for me how my technology should operate. But, if true, I think that would describe the vast, vast majority of all computer users and I think most of us are fine with that in the sense that we just want things to work and don't feel any burning need to muck around with fixing or altering these machines.
As for the iPad, I won't be buying one this year because I probably won't have the money to spend (or perhaps waste) on it, but I think it would be really great gadget for tech civilians like my partner Jeff to have. If I had the money for it, I'd probably buy him one because he is not much of a computer user, but when he uses one, he wants it to be extremely easy and straightforward. He doesn't write or edit photos or do much social networking. His use for a computer is confined to web browsing and the two or three emails he sends each week. Indeed, he finds the MacBook to be overkill for his own needs and gets frustrated with my usual jumble of open apps and browser tabs and files-in-progress whenever he goes to it to check his mail or look something up online. So the iPad would probably be the perfect device for him, and he wouldn't care at all about not being able to "open" it. So while I get Doctorow's point and sympathize to a great degree with the ideology of it, I don't think buying an iPad or wanting an easy-to-use device makes people who are not tinkerers or hackers or power users dumb-ass "consumers" in the way that he quotes William Gibson describing them: "something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote."
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