The datapad — Jason Preston

Like a lot of geeks, I’ve read a lot of sci-fi over the course of my lifetime, and one of the things I’m starting to get really excited about is that the world is finally getting the datapad.

Looking back, the personal mobile phone is the device that started it all - people became introduced to, and grew used to:

Carrying a pocket-sized electronic device
A device that was used for communication
Belonging to one person individually

When you think about it, these are huge changes in every communications and computing paradigm that previously existed. You used to call a location looking for a particular person, and now you call a person…who cares where they are?

Carrying a personalized, individually-owned portable communication device is 90% of what sci-fi calls a datapad. The missing magical element has been effective, wide-scale data connectivity…

…right, internet access.

Now we have all kinds of Android-powered mobile devices, iOS phones and pads, and now smart mobile handsets powered by Windows Phone 7. All of which can magically interact with gaziagabytes of data through cell-tower based data transfer technology, just like magic. We have datapads.

What I’m excited to learn over the next few years:

Will the iPad become primarily a personal device or a family/group access point?
Assuming that mobile internet access will become the most frequent consumer access point for the internet. How will these interface restrictions redefine the online services we take for granted/consider mature today?