[Hawramani]

To me things haven't really changed. The non-techy users never made good use of the freedoms of the PC-era, so to them their environment was just as restricted as the Kindle or iPad environment.

As for the geeks, things haven't changed either. We find ways to open up the devices and get the freedoms we want.

[joebadmo]

I agree with you on the extreme ends of the spectrum. But there are plenty of people in the middle who can be encouraged in either direction by the way we construct our tools. I think the explosion of content on the web, or Web 2.0, is all the evidence you need.

[chc]

The iPad has also had an explosion of content. Why is that not all the evidence you need?

[mstolpm]

I can't speak for chc, but content creation on tablets and smart phones is real for joe average. Maybe not the kind of content joebadmo is thinking about, but the iphone 4 is the most popular camera on Flickr: photo and video editing power is given to the normal user without learning Photoshop or Avid. Even the customizing of your "personal" news magazine in apps like flipboard, Zite, ... is some kind of "content creation". Moreover, social media doesn't need keyboard and PC - most content on SM sites is created/shared "on the fly". I could go on. And lets wait for the integration of voice recognition in iOS 5 (and coming Android versions) - I don't thing the post-PC area is a step backwards. Content and content creation is changing for the non-power user ... and tablets and smart phones are heading to fill this niche.

[joebadmo]

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2956098

[joebadmo]

Could you elaborate on that? Do you mean apps? Or some other kind of content? I'm not quite following what you mean.

[chc]

Apps, optimized websites, content-sharing networks like Instagram, etc.

Basically, the flip side of the increased consumption is that it's a lot easier to get your work out to other people, which means people who previously couldn't or wouldn't are now becoming producers. For example, a lot more people are publishing books for e-readers because those platforms make it so easy — with Amazon, it's pretty much as simple as logging into your Amazon account and uploading a text file. Web series (e.g. "The Guild") are a viable medium because so many people have these easy-consumption devices.

[joebadmo]

see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2956098

[rmc]

The non-techy users never made good use of the freedoms of the PC-era, so to them their environment was just as restricted as the Kindle or iPad environment.

Yes and no. They didn't create software, but they created content. Just look at Facebook & other social network sites. It's full of user generated content. Likewise people generated content to print out with word processors, and they generated content as emails to send to people. They also generated photographic content. However pretty much all of this is now done in web browsers, so in a way, you can generate all this content with iPad/Kindle.