[Air-L] why iPad

Janna Anderson andersj at elon.edu
Fri Jul 16 03:56:24 PDT 2010


The iPad has amazing battery life compared with a laptop computer; it has
four times more long-lasting power than a laptop for field work. It is also
a great travel-work-pleasure device - you can store dozens of films,
hundreds of documents, books, etc. and access them easily on long flights,
in airports, in hotels with sketchy wifi or ridiculous fees for Internet.
You can watch an entire season of "Dr. Who" while traveling to Australia,
for instance, no worries.

On 7/15/10 11:11 PM, "danah boyd" <aoir.z3z at danah.org> wrote:

> Personally, I bought an iPad for field research and it's been great so far.
> What I needed was a reliable web browser that I could show to people I
> interview.  And the AT&T plan - as evil as it is - was a lot cheaper than any
> of the laptop aircards and required much less commitment.
> 
> In the process, I learned something important.  When I put a computer in front
> of someone, people face the screen. I can watch them OR I can watch the
> screen.  Watching both is awkward and creates odd social dynamics because I
> have to sit next to the person. With the iPad, I could put it down on a table
> between us and watch the person's face while watching where they browse,
> albeit upside-down, but that's easy when I'm not trying to read the exact
> content.  Shared browsing is very easy to accommodate and it's quite easy to
> go through sites with someone.
> 
> I'm not using it for taking notes or other text-heavy processes.  I'm looking
> to browse. And not to mimic browsing that one does on a computer.  Just
> outright stare-at-screen browsing while in the midst of an interview. And I'm
> very happy with it.
> 
> danah
> 
> 
> On Jul 15, 2010, at 6:07 PM, Barry Wellman wrote:
> 
>> After all the hype, I can't figger out why someone (even at Duke) would use
>> an iPad rather than a netbook for their research. Sounds like kewl won over
>> functionality. If I'm taking notes, I'd rather have a real keyboard. If I'm
>> doing other stuff, I'd rather have the plethora of applications running on
>> Win7/XP or MacOX than on the little apps running on iPods and iPhones with
>> their baby OS. -- I've been using the iPhone 3GS for months now as a pocket
>> phone etc and am continually frustrated on what it can't do.
>> End iRant. End PodHype
>> 
>> Barry Wellman
>> _______________________________________________________________________
>> 
>>  S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC               NetLab Director
>>  Department of Sociology                  725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388
>>  University of Toronto   Toronto Canada M5S 2J4   twitter:barrywellman
>>  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman             fax:+1-416-978-3963
>>  Updating history:      http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
>> _______________________________________________________________________
>> 
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> 
> ------
> 
> "taken out of context, i must seem so strange" -- ani
> http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/
> http://www.danah.org/
> @zephoria
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Janna Quitney Anderson
Director of Imagining the Internet
www.imaginingtheinternet.org

Associate Professor of Communications
Director of Internet Projects
School of Communications
Elon University
andersj at elon.edu
(336) 278-5733 (o)








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