The XX Factor

Jessica , the iPad's name may be unfortunate, but to my eyes, it also looks incredibly cool. As a hopeless Apple-phile, I admittedly want one (in my dreams). On the plus side, it seems to take us one step closer to all those sci-fi movies in which people control their computers by manipulating holograms in space with their hands. But it certainly isn't going to relieve anyone's concerns about how we're all becoming too plugged into technology. Maybe this is just a tie-in for Pixar (which Steve Jobs founded), but the thing looks disturbingly like the devices the blob-people all carried around and stared into, blankly, on the spaceship in the second half of Wall-E . I thought that was a dystopian fantasy, but if the iPad fulfills our every need, as Jobs, with his typical hyperbole, makes me half believe, then why would we ever put one down? The thing is so cool it actually scares me. I think I'm going to go hug my daughter just now, to remind myself of what's really real.

Photograph of iPad by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.