My iPad My Saviour

KATHY FOLEY WRITES a thoughtful piece on the place the iPad (or its clone) will occupy in my home by the time my daughter gets bored with primary school. [5 MB PDF] Some observers think I won't have my newspapers or news magazines anymore. They think I'll have at least one tablet to consume my information. Maybe so. But for my neighbours (and at least one Irish person on Twitter every hour) who complain about slow internet connectivity, I wonder if this brave new world of always-on, swish-refreshing, dynamic content will really take over the time slots enjoyed by the broadcast spectrum. I'm an avowed aynchronous infomaniac. I record stuff and play it back. I prefer taking my Twitter by RSS, not on the public timeline. I like my audio books in my earbuds, not as a page-turning experience. I also like handsome bound editions because three generations of my family have grown up learning arts and letters without needing a glowing screen. We'll have some sort of electronic tablet because I don't want my daughter carrying a heavy bookbag. But I don't think my sit-back couch potato mode will revolve around a tablet.

Accordingly, I'm setting a long bet with myself and putting this post into my draft mode for St Patrick's Day 2015 as well as publishing it now. Let's see how I consume my daily news in five years' time.

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Previously on InsideView.ie: "Long bet on Reading Patterns", 11 April 2010.

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