Again, I agree that it's not one-dimensional. Tablets are making the consumption and light interaction aspects of computing accessible to a huge section of people for whom they were inaccessible before. And that's great. But the PC represented a tool that made the production aspect of computing accessible to a lot more people, too. And the web was a continuation of that trend.

Tablets look like the end of that side to me. It looks like an optimization of the consumption aspect at the expense of the creation aspect.

You may see it as a third device, but I think a lot of people see it as a replacement device, and those are exactly the people who could benefit most from tools that make it easier for them to produce things.

I think my ultimate lament was that the way the market works, of course large companies are going to privilege consumption, because they can make more money that way.

(Meta: Thanks, I accept and appreciate the apology!)

At least Apple, I think, sells music and videos and books and apps because people want them. Sure, they make some money (not much compared to the rest of the business) but they mostly do it to turn their devices into something people actually like to use.

People want music, want videos, want books, want apps. The market gives them what they want. This is not a case of the market delivering something consumers don’t actually like.

This is not a conspiracy of big companies to dumb people down. People are already that way. The PC didn’t help with that one bit and tablets certainly also won’t help.

Again: there is no problem.

I think you could have used the same argument for the media distribution model that existed before PCs were widely accessible: look, everyone is sitting on the couch, watching television, clearly that's what they want. But once we gave a lot of people access to PCs, we saw an explosion of interaction, content creation, communication, participation.

I don't think it's an overt conspiracy, it's just self-interest and centralized resources and power.

I believe that PCs did change the way people are, and the way they think. Not everyone, maybe not even a majority, at least not overtly. But I think it had a profound effect on the culture. I believe the Web made a difference. I believe the ways we have to access the Web make a difference.

You can point to dumb people continuing to be dumb and say there is no problem. I see a problem, and my solution is to talk about it, to try to get influential people to think about it, and think about making tools to empower creation by the technically lay (like me).

You do know Napster? You do know The Pirate Bay? People want access to mainstream music, mainstream videos and mainstream books, no matter the device. If the big companies don’t give it to them people will go to great lengths to get said access. That’s just how it is, always has been, always will be. You are again and again creating false dichotomies.

The media distribution model of all the mainstream stuff is not different between PCs and tablets. Tablets might be a bit more convenient when it comes to buying stuff (probably not even that) but that’s it. You can get mainstream stuff on both. People want mainstream stuff on both. Napster and all the later filesharing is a testament to that.

But that’s not the whole story. Far from it. All the other content out there is perfectly accessible with tablets. They are just as good at accessing non-mainstream content as PCs. They are not limited in that respect. They all have awesome browsers (the most modern stuff you can get), they allow you to download podcasts or to subscribe to RSS feeds. It’s all possible.

Tablets are the content consumption Yin to the content creation Yang.

I just don’t understand how one could see that any other way.

Napster, at least (I don't know about Pirate Bay), also enabled a class of underground/amateur music by giving it a distribution channel that never existed before. In a way that iTunes does not. I think, at least to some degree, you have the causality backwards. People consumed mainstream content because that was what was largely available to them. How much of mainstream content consumption has been replaced by amateur content on the web? As the culture at large gets more and more used to this, I think the idea of mainstream will hold less and less power. Of course, unless devices like tablets continue to convince them that the mainstream is the only valuable stream.

The content is available on tablets, too, but the device subtly privileges its own centrally mediated distribution channels. I believe this privilege will only get stronger.

Getting rare music through file sharing sucked. I know it, I was trying to get it. The iTunes music store has a greater selection of rare music than any file sharing I ever tried in the early 2000s.

Of course, unless devices like tablets continue to convince them that the mainstream is the only valuable stream.

Why should that happen? Why? I don’t understand. Non-mainstream content is a first class citizen on tablets.

I … I really don’t get it. You are postulating a effect that seems so wildly implausible and absolutely absurd to me.

I agree with the thrust of your argument. Many are drawing a false sense of opposition between consumption and creation. Listening to music (consuming) became insanely easy in the last decade, but, surprise surprise, the tools to create music improved just as dramatically. Just as importantly, the ease of consuming enabled musicians to draw on an unprecedented pool of influences - many genres have undergone wild transformations as artists have been able to access more inspiration with increased ease.

Some here might dismiss TV completely, but many consider this a "Golden Age" for television writing, too. Is it a stretch to think that almost unlimited access to the history of film might actually be inspiring more and more people to write smarter material for popular media?

Yep, and differently from tv, consumption on the iPad is much more likely to be 'relatively' peer-to-peer. If we pay for content, there will surely soon be more producers around, given an easy-enough distribution chain/a flat-enough distribution channel. Very different from the TV business and it's intricate hierarchies and institutions!

I sure think this IS a Golden Age. The bizarre and 'negative' traits, and our moments of distress, easily hide it for us - but it's here and now. We just need to learn how to create a society out of the jumble (ie, planet) that's out there...