[hzzn]

I agree with the fundamental philosophy behind Doctorow's argument, but good grief:

  The model of interaction with the iPad is to be a "consumer," what
  William Gibson memorably described as "something the size of a baby
  hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in
  the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered
  with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and
  makes them sting. It has no mouth... no genitals, and can only express
  its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing
  the channels on a universal remote."

I don't know if it's possible to be more shrill.

Take a close look at the game industry for a glimpse into a slightly more probable future. The consoles, dominant as they are, did not kill PC gaming. A significant and very profitable chunk of gaming occurs on personal computers. The indie gaming scene is arguably stronger now than it ever has been. There has been an explosion of inexpensive or free or open source game development tools, engines and libraries over the years. As a result, it has never been easier or cheaper to make games and share them with others than it is right now. That's good!

On the other hand, the corporate gatekeeping to the console publishing world makes the App Store look like GitHub. That's bad!

It is far more useful to address actual problems that computing appliances might pose than it is to paint apocalyptic sci-fi scenarios where we are transformed into creatures made up mostly of eyes.