However, something felt wrong about this. Maybe it is a generation thing, but if the above is your life, then how much of a life is it?
Luckily help has arrived, but not from interactive TVs. If a family of 4 can barely agree what TV channel is to provide the background noise to their computing activities, how would they agree on one joint interactive activity. This new reality was vividly described by Robin Bloor , one of the first industry analyst and author of havemacwillblog.com. In how “The iPad Will Replace The Laptop” he describes numerous use cases of how “lean forward” is no longer needed to have a good and/or productive time online. If you’re a person dying to get an iPad (like most of us in Europe) but also if you interested in the future of TV or indeed … in the future of the cloud … then this is a must read story.
Important to realize is that this is NOT about switching devices, but about a fundamentally different way to interact with content and functionality (a.k.a. with the cloud). People are interested in taking a ride, not in the art of motor cycle management or ownership. And that is exactly what the cloud brings. In fact, Google referenced the same phenomena when launching their latest incarnation of Google Docs. They stated that about as many people should need an office suite as need photoshop, autocad or similar. Most people read or at best annotate, only very few create.
In this light, the decision of the Library of Congress to preserve the first billion tweets for prosperity (including interesting twitbits “like what did Dave or Joe or Bob have for Lunch on Monday Aprill 11th” may not be so stupid after all. The “we are all authors” movement may turn out to have been an one-time phenomena caused by temporary ubiquity of keyboards. Let’s face it, writing 2500 tweets for 7 followers is not a fulfilling, economic or even sensible activity, let alone reading them (if you don’t believe me have a try). Similarly we may realize that the volume of email we all complain about , is because we all spend too much time typing and not enough time reading.
I think we can all agree Apple already changed the computer industry several times and is revolutionizing the music industry. With the iPad they will now be changing the TV industry (Apple TV was not a failure, it is just infrastructure for the iPad) and by leaving out a keyboard they now also created the ultimate work, home and play “cloud consumption experience”.
This may mean that we are going back to an time where people using PCs are not just the ones working . They are likely to be the ones creating cloud stuff: content creators and functionality developers (a.k.a . IT folks). All other people – working, relaxing and playing – will be doing so on cloud consumption devices.
PS Some of you may point out that for that for the above to work, it would be a good idea if Google Docs actually worked on the ipod . In typically IT fashion we would call this an “implementation detail”, but feel free to point it out to Google, preferably before I get a chance to pick up my iPad from Europe.
Note: I could not find the original author or copyright holder of the Modern Life cartoon, any pointers appreciated.
Tune Into The Cloud 