The launch is still going on, but I’ve already seen enough that I have stuff I want to say.

My first reaction was slightly underwhelmed; there’s been so much discussion and most of it appears to have been right, so I was looking at the feed and thinking… that’s it?

But it’s not “it”. I think it may be massive. Apple’s iPad is a device right out of 70s science fiction TV shows. It’s literally one part of your silver suit/raygun/talking house in space ensemble.

I won’t rehash its capabilities, because there’s going to be plenty of places you can find that. But basically, it does all the things you think it does – movies, iPhoto, newspapers, books, and apps.

The thing which has my attention right now – aside from the slightly cheeky nod Jobs has just given Amazon (thanks for doing a great job pioneering this technology, we’ll take it from here…) and the stunning comparison of B&W Kindle vs colour iPad, is the gesture system. At this scale, it’s something else. It’s tactile and therefore intuitive and friendly, and you can really do the thing Tom Cruise does in Minority Report.

I dunno why exactly, but that was the moment I started to think “wow” – when I realised that this was a computer which would interact with me on almost a primate level; it’s a tool which responds to my hands.

But just for additional yowza: the ebook reader software they’re showing right now is in the ePub format. Although it’s not clear whether this means you can import your own ebooks from other sources, you’d think so. In which case, what a kick in the head for proprietary formats.

I’ll hand you back to all the people who know stuff now. But the question in my mind was: have they done the Apple thing?

And right now I’m saying: yes.

EARTH NOT IN DANGER OF EXPLODING

(News I Made Up.)

New York, Jan 25th 2058

In a shocking announcement today, Gunther Brink of the UN Global Committee On Near Earth Objects accepted that the threat from NEOs had been overstated for nearly forty years.

“The threat is considerably less acute, statistically speaking, than has been generally believed,” Mr Brink said. “In fact, it’s probably not more likely, over the next hundred years, than one chance in five thousand that the Earth will be struck by an NEO large enough to cause global catastrophe.”

Science Minister Lady Crabtree (a former chiropractor) was quick to reassure the public that this is a very large number, and that the world is safe.

Asked how the GCNEO had come to issue the shocking reports of 2023 and 2039, in which the collision chance was estimated as high as one in three hundred, Mr Brink said that political pressure had been considerable.

“With science, you know, there is never certainty. We try, but we cannot bridge the gap between the scientific language, where we say ‘this is a possible risk and we should guard against it’ and the political situation where if it isn’t going to happen no one wants to admit that they spent money on it. One chance in five thousand that the Earth will be totally destroyed and we will all die? That’s impossibly high! But in political terms, it’s not nearly high enough to justify action.”

Politicians have sharply criticised the GCNEO for a lack of adherence to the principles of simple truth-telling. But Mr Brink is unrepentent.

“Oh, ja, of course, I’m totally chastened now that those lying fleabags have called me a fibber,” he said. “For the love of Mike, this is the destruction of the entire world at stake. At what point does it become an issue? We made a study. One chance in one thousand is the threshold where political leaders started to pay attention. So we adjusted the figures to meet that expectation. The truth is that the numbers are higher, sure. But it’s also true that either the uneducated morons who run our world cannot get their heads around perfectly simple statistics or they are too craven to act when the scientific and rational course is very clear. So we made it easy for them. We gave them the idiot answers to their idiot questions. Oh, hell, yes, there is egg all over my face now.”

Mr Brink holds a number of postgraduate degrees and speaks with a continental European accent. It’s probably best to assume he’s a lunatic.

AMIS CALLS FOR EUTHANASIA BOOTHS!

Shock. Horror. Alarm. Headlines. Tea.

There’s an expression you don’t see so often at the moment, perhaps because erudition is considered a bit suspect – a sort of cheating, especially if it’s connected in some way with the nefarious frogs -

épater la bourgeoisie

This isn’t the bourgeoisie in the sense of Marx’s economic/class analysis, exactly; this is more like ‘middle England’ – a group defined from the outside by a supposed set of prim values and a censorious moral tone. The bourgeoisie are the people of the suburban drawing room, shaking their heads and sighing over the decline of society. They’re shopkeepers and church wardens with the self-opinion of earls and presidents. They take – not undeservedly – a great deal of flack (1,2).

I can’t help but feel there’s a good-sized wallop of this going on with Martin Amis’s latest statement, and jolly amusing it’s all going to be, too. But at the same time, my heart sinks a little bit because I suspect the bourgeoisie – or rather, those people who have in some measure the attitudes ascribed to them – have evolved. The French poets who coined the phrase were in the business of shocking them out of their complacency, and it may have worked. Or not.

But here’s the trouble with outrage these days:

It’s the natural state of the modern bourgeoisie.

It may always have been, actually – what better way of invoking the classic middle Englander is there than the letters page of The Times or The Express and ‘outraged of Shrewton Sudbury”?

But the question then becomes: how do you shake into self-examination a group whose main defining category is that they’re cross because someone has shaken them? I’m not sure you can. I suspect you have to be less confrontational and more sneaky.

Not that the old way isn’t more fun.