Like most geeks, I turned in to Apple's announcement in January about the iPad with much interest and I confess, a good dose of fanboi excitement. I was in a departmental meeting (OMG! I am done with those!) when Steve Jobs took the stage, and when the device was unveiled, I let out a little squeal, turned my laptop screen so everyone around the table could see, and said "Yeah, I want one." But after the initial hype and hullabaloo faded, and I sat and thought about the dilemma that many folks have been writing about over the last few days -- this divide between content creation and content consumption, between being an active participant in our digital world and being a spectator, watching only those elements that Apple sanctions -- well, I was a lot less certain about whether or not an iPad would be something I'd purchase.

I wasn't an early adopter of either the iPod or the iPhone (I've had the former for about 4 years and the latter for less than 1), although I will say that I have come to love both devices dearly and rely on them heavily. As a huge fan of music, I love being able to carry my whole music collection with me at all times. But that "freedom" of listening (freedom within the constraints of DRM-tagged songs, of course, and within the limits of the storage capabilities of my iPod) wasn't terribly radical; it was merely an expansion of the world of the Walkman (a device I've cherished for almost thirty years). The iPhone, however, was an expansion of my cellphone usage and a shift in my mobile devise habits -- it was a personal tech revolution. When the salesperson told me that it would "change my life," I scoffed, but undoubtedly it has. It has become key to my productivity. I carried it to meetings (OMG! I am done with those!) oftentimes in lieu of a laptop. My iPhone is rarely out of my hand, let alone out of reach. (I may or may not sleep with it.)

Although the promise of the iPad was that it would "change everything," I couldn't really think of what could be changed or needed to be changed for me. Already I had a smartphone that had rocked my world. I could email, surf the web, text my kid, IM with my boyfriend, let my mom's calls go to voicemail, take pictures, monitor my exercise regimen, check-in via Foursquare or Gowalla, update Facebook, tweet, watch YouTube videos, take notes, listen to music, play Scrabble, make my voice sound like T-Pain, and read comics. Dare I ask for more?!

To pronounce (sight unseen for most of us) that the iPad "changes everything" seems silly, no doubt. But to just throw up one's hands and say that everything has already changed demonstrates a failure of imagination as well. Apple's products mark neither the end of nor the monopoly on innovation. I am very sympathetic to Cory Doctorow's argument against the iPad -- an argument I find compelling beyond just this newest gadget, but in relation to the iPhone, the iPod and whole iTunes company store -- and I too hope to see these and similar mobile computing devices move into the hands of a less autocratic application and hardware market (Go go gadget Google).

I like to think of myself as a content creator. I write, I blog. But I am also an avid content consumer. (I've long preferred the phrase "avid reader," but hey, there ya go.) A huge fan and collector of books (those old-fashioned, papery, "bound" kind) I have never owned an e-book reader, other than the Kindle and Stanza apps on my iPhone. It's not that I'm opposed to digitizing books or reading books in non-papery formats, like some of my fellow literary friends are. I've just always liked the feel of a book in my hands, in my lap. But it seems lately that most of my reading is already being done electronically -- namely RSS feeds, which I spend far more time "consuming" than I do the printed word. I spent most of my day (and a good portion of my evening) in front of a screen.

It was actually a screen -- a dual monitor for better production and consumption -- that was the initial motivation behind a trip to Best Buy on Saturday morning. But the screen I came home with (Thank you, Kin) was the "9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology, 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch (ppi)" thing of beauty. And as far as screens go, yes, the reading experience on the iPad is simply marvelous. The size and weight of the device is comforting to this bibliophile, and I can see this replacing books for me. (And to quote Joe Biden, that's a big fucking deal.) Despite the lure of gaming and productivity and Netflix-streaming, it's noteworthy that the only money I spent this weekend on stylin' out my new content consumption device was to pay $6 to download my very first e-book (from Amazon.com).