Of the thousands of reviews of Apple’s iPad tablet computer, one of the most informative and ultimately convincing is a YouTube video of a two-and-a-half-year-old girl playing with the device for the first time.
In the clip, the girl’s father hands her the book-sized device and within seconds she’s navigating various apps through the now ubiquitous swipe, pinch and point gestures. Over the next 5 minutes, she plays a spelling game, looks at pictures, plays with virtual bubble-wrap and bangs on a virtual piano.
Seeing the little girl use both hands to manipulate virtual objects on a screen bigger than her head, it’s hard not to think that this seemingly simple multi-touch screen will define her expectations about what a computer is and is for.
She will grow up in a world in which screens that don’t react to touch seem broken, and devices that cannot be anything at any time to anybody will be annoying at best. She will expect virtual objects to behave as instantaneously and intuitively as their physical equivalents. This blurred distinction between real and virtual could very well seem like magic, but could equally probably become the new “normal”.
via: New Scientist
