• Merlin, in a tribute to the iPad and David Foster Wallace, utterly nails it.

Merlin, in a tribute to the iPad and David Foster Wallace, utterly nails it.

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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Source: merlin