My main reason for not getting an iPad is simple: I can’t afford it. I’ve played with one a few times at stores and confirmed my hunch that it is pretty much an ideal tool for “surfing”, which, as it happens, I do a lot of.

But I’ve also been developing great trepidation over what I see as Apple’s leadership in the effort to turn all of us into passive consumers. Apple is trying to set itself up as the new gatekeeper of what we see and hear, like the music industry, and TV networks of old. They collect money from us to see content, and from those whose content Apple chooses to distribute.

Some of Apple’s editing decisions ( censorship?) has been rather heavy handed of late. Of course, you have to make your content delivery device easy if you want passive consumers. ( Television … which used to be very easy. ) Because if they have to work, they won’t be passive and then you don’t control them… the market that you are selling exclusive access to.

Easy however, can be a technological trap. Cars are easy compared to public transit… at first. But now we have cities where you need to have a car to have any sort of life, and where it is difficult and expensive to change anything because the existing infrastructure pushes you further down the established path; even when you can see it is leading in a direction you don’t like.

But, at the moment the iPad is too expensive to be a real earth shaker. Apple at the moment is concentrating on capturing the market segment with lots of disposable income. When iPads are as cheap as DVD players, then it will be time to worry about everyone being glued to their “boob pads” passively accepting what the new media industry feed them.