Who is the iPad user?

Do we value the pursuit of knowledge, discovery, and innovation into the mass-information age? do we want our children to grasp and manipulate the world first-hand? are man-made objects as equally accessible as natural entities?

Coy Doctorow is angry with Apple's path: The model of interaction with the iPad is to be a "consumer," what William Gibson memorably described as "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." He is on to something significant.