iPads, “Hackers” and the Death of Computing

Inevitably, amongst the rest of the inane wail­ing about the iPad in the last 48 hours, the old “closed sys­tem” meme has reared its tired head. The par­tic­u­lar form of that meme that I want to focus on is a par­tic­u­larly annoy­ing vari­ant and one that is best expressed by Alex Payne in his blog post On the iPad. In yon­der post Alex makes the assertion:

The thing that both­ers me most about the iPad is this: if I had an iPad rather than a real com­puter as a kid, I’d never be a pro­gram­mer today. I’d never have had the abil­ity to run what­ever stu­pid, poten­tially harm­ful, hugely edu­ca­tional pro­grams I could down­load or write. I wouldn’t have been able to fire up ResEdit and edit out the Mac startup sound so I could tin­ker on the com­puter at all hours with­out wak­ing my par­ents. The iPad may be a boon to tra­di­tional educ­tion, inso­far as it allows for mul­ti­me­dia text­books and such, but in its cur­rent form, it’s a detri­ment to the sort of hacker cul­ture that has pro­pelled the dig­i­tal economy.

Perhaps, but let me counter with a bit of my own his­tory. My first com­puter was a Mac Plus. The Mac Plus was as closed a box as the iPad ever will be. At that time there were no freely avail­able devel­op­ment tools like Xcode (you know, the tool that let’s you develop for the hor­ri­bly closed iPad). Development tools cost hun­dreds of dol­lars. There was no Apple Developer Connection web­site, fuck Alex, there was no web. This idea that Apple has mor­phed from some hippy-dippy hacker-friendly love-fest into a dystopian cor­po­rate jug­ger­naut is plain wrong. Continuing, Alex writes:

Wherever we stand in dig­i­tal his­tory, the iPad leaves me with the feel­ing that Apple’s inter­ests and val­ues going for­ward are deeply diver­gent with my own. There’s noth­ing wrong with that; peo­ple make con­sumer deci­sions every day based on their val­ues. If I don’t like the prod­uct that the iPad turns out to be once released, I’m free to sim­ply not buy it. These things have a way of evolv­ing, and I won’t pre­clude the pos­si­bil­ity that Apple even­tu­ally addresses con­cerns about the open­ness of the device.

For now, though, I remain dis­turbed. The future of per­sonal com­put­ing that the iPad shows us is both seduc­tive and dystopian. It’s not a future I want to bring into my home.

This is the dilemma that Alex presents us with. Moving for­ward we can either have a world of hacker-friendly gen­eral pur­pose com­put­ers, or a dystopian night­mare of “closed” prod­ucts. I would argue that this is a false dilemma. The first way in which Alex’s argu­ment fails is that he con­fuses the iPad, as well as the iPhone and iPod Touch with gen­eral pur­pose com­put­ers, and then attempts to draw con­clu­sions about the future of com­put­ing in gen­eral from how Apple treats them. It is true that these devices are in essence com­put­ers. Hell, the first gen­er­a­tion iPhone had spec­i­fi­ca­tions that, in every way, are supe­rior to that of my old Mac Plus. However, Apple obvi­ously doesn’t see them in that way. To try and dis­cern Apple’s motives in regards to the very future of com­put­ing based on the iGad­gets is foolish.

The other way in which Alex misses the boat is the time-honored new media gen­er­a­tion Y stan­dard of ignor­ing all of recorded his­tory prior to the year 2000. Here’s a hint for those unaware: “hack­ers” are not some mys­ti­cal new phe­nom­e­non of the com­puter age. They didn’t spring, Athena-like, from the fore­head of Zeus with the intro­duc­tion of the per­sonal com­puter. There have always been tin­ker­ers, “hack­ers” if you will, and they always man­age to work around what­ever road-blocks the pur­vey­ors of their par­tic­u­lar hobby put in their path.

It’s con­sid­ered bad form to use car analo­gies in ref­er­ence to com­put­ing, but this is a case where I think an excep­tion can be made. Once upon a time the inter­nal com­bus­tion engine was sim­plic­ity itself. Mainly mechan­i­cal parts, with a smat­ter­ing of elec­tri­cal (not elec­tronic, there is a dif­fer­ence) com­po­nents. Anyone with the time and incli­na­tion could dis­as­sem­ble and tin­ker with the engine in their vehi­cle. One might say that they could even “hack” them. Shade-tree mechan­ics were legion, and many the youth learned the skills that would lead them to careers in mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing. Does any of this sound familiar?

Over time, though, the nature of the auto­mo­tive indus­try changed. Automobiles became more and more com­pli­cated and “closed.” Pundits bemoaned the death of the shade-tree mechanic. And yet, tinkerer’s still exist. Communities of enthu­si­asts who share their knowl­edge and love of the IC engine still exist. The world didn’t end, it merely changed.

A far more ratio­nal take on this sit­u­a­tion, but one that I still have some dis­agree­ments with was posted by Steven Frank. Steven sees the iPad as an exam­ple of the dif­fer­ence between what he dubs “Old World” and “New World” com­put­ing. I think that this is a fas­ci­nat­ing idea and I largely agree with it. My dis­sention is with Steven’s belief that the “New World” will nec­es­sar­ily sup­plant the “Old World.” I don’t see that as a fore­gone con­clu­sion. I think that both mod­els of com­put­ing can coex­ist, just as con­sumer friendly auto­mo­biles coex­ist with “hacker” friendly customs.

In either case, the iPad is hardly the her­ald of our new dystopian future…that’s Skynet, get it straight.