I don't, but I expect to soon. The world of publishing is changing so fast I don't see how I can hold out from buying one much longer. Over the years as new technology has roared into the public domain like a neverending freight train I have traditionally waited for the inital buzz to wear off on the latest gizmo only to eventually succumb and buy with what I like to think is a somewhat more educated persepctive. Second generation technodevices are always better than gen one. And I have always been a second generation buyer.
My very first memory of the wonders of technology was when our family first got cable tv sometime around 1972 or so. I was astounded. Dozens of television channels at the click of a button! I remember seeing myself on tv in a televised high school basketball game. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
In high school in the early '70s all the rich kids got new calculators to help them with their calculus homework. I did mine with a slide rule. I never owned a calculator in high school. When I started college in 1975 the campus computer at the University of Cincinnati was a building! And we learned to create calendars by key-punching hundreds of little cards on a special terminal...just to make a one-page calendar. Computers were not available then but being an engineering student I eventually broke down and bought a calculator well after everyone else owned one. It was handy for sure, but never having had one I was a whiz at doing math on sight and in my head. It's still an advantage I feel I hold today being able to do quick math calculations in my head.
When I got into publishing in 1990 desktop publishing did not yet exist. I typed out my stories on an IBM Selectric II, gave it to a typesetter, and they re-typed it and stuffed it in the typesetting machine which spit out reams of glossy white paper with columnized pages of type. The artist then cut out these blocks of text and pasted them on layout boards to be sent to the printer. You learned then and there to turn in perfectly edited articles because you didn't get the chance to fix typos.
Eventually computers and design software took over publishing and I broke down and bought my first computer with a mono-chromatic green screen. I still remember the first time I saw a line drawing of a naked lady on my screen. It was quite exciting. But that's for another discussion.
Then the world of cell phones stormed the country in the late '90s. I didn't get my first cell phone until the summer of 2001, and I remember hating the idea of people being able to find me anytime anywhere. One had to become more creative at lying about where you were until 2:00 in the morning. But it was a necessary evil and one I couldn't have lived without as I started my first company.
I've watched the publishing industry advance rapidly from just generating pages for print to creating this whole new world to explore online which grew at exponential speed. As a consumer of publishing I now read much more online than I ever do in print. But it has its drawbacks. Wearying of what tv has to offer I often retreat to my computer cave to explore the much larger and controllable universe of online information. The drawback is that it makes me antisocial in my home.
Now comes the tablet device, or more specifically, the iPad. The amount of content available on the iPad is still somewhat limited, but it won't be that way for long. A recent article I read said that 40 million iPads will be sold by 2012. The content explosion for that medium is coming. In one respect I expect to be a part of it as a publisher in that medium. But as a consumer I can immediately see the many advantages. I can watch tv with my wife while also browsing on my iPad. I can take it into the bathroom with me (which will be the end of my newspaper subscription). And I can read it in bed (meaning I will go to bed a lot earlier than usual). The benefits to my social life I can already see will be considerable. I haven't bought one yet, but the day is fast approaching.
