The most true thing I have read this week: Chris Mooney writes when we have a solar company that’s worth as much as ExxonMobil, I’m quite confident our politics will change.

(And yes, he didn’t write it this week. But I didn’t read it until this week.)

(The Tree, by Canuck Photography)

Maggie Koerth-Baker seems to be slowly displacing Cory Doctorow as my favourite BoingBoing writer. Today, she has me pondering whether or not I would be willing to pack up Maggie and take her to Mars. That’s my Maggie, by the way, and not Ms. Koerth-Baker. Though I’m sure she would make a lovely Martian companion.

On a parting note: A neo-nazi couple find out that they have Jewish roots, embrace the religion, and become active members of the Jewish community.

Are you considering the purchase of an iPad?

If so, you may be a bit late — the things are moving like hotcakes would, if hotcakes were popular electronic devices. But Apple is surely producing more of the things, so it remains a valid question — and one that you have some time to ponder.

Here at the Big Bad Blog we read quite a few tech blogs, and have read numerous reviews as a result. The two best reviews — one positive, one negative — both come (surprisingly enough) from the same source: Boing Boing.

The good

The first of the two reviews is by Xeni Jardin, and is titled Apple’s iPad is a touch of genius. You may not be surprised to learn that it is the positive one.

If you want a look at the iPad’s browsing experience, what it can do, and what it feels like, this review is for you — and it’s glowing. The gist of the review is that Apple has not just taken it’s revolutionary hand-held device interface, and given it a larger format. Instead, they have actually put some thought into how that interface functions on the larger device.

The result is what you have come to expect from Apple — an excellent user interface, and an interaction with the device that is slightly inexplicable in that it is new.

If that conclusion is not apparent on reading her review, find the follow-up reviews on BoingBoing, of specific apps. The particulars come out when she drills down into actual interactions using the device.

The bad

The flip side of the iPad is given by Cory Doctorow, titled why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t either).

Not surprisingly, given the glowing initial review, Mr. Doctorow’s concerns are not about the device’s performance but about Apple’s closed approach. No sharing. A device design so closed that Apple will not even allow the battery to be swapped out.

It is, Mr. Doctorow asserts, a device for technophobes. The iPad moves us away from being familiar and comfortable with technology, and insists that all users be blind to what happens under the “hood” of the device we are using.

What will we do?

Ms. Jardin’s review make it clear that Mr. Doctorow is wrong on at least one count. Mr. Doctorow claims — or at least implies — that the iPad cannot be revolutionary because it comes from a large corporation.

This is simply not true. It is not true in the abstract, and it is not true here.

Mobile technology has long been about taking what we do on large scales, and putting them on small devices. From the basic idea of having a phone you can put in your pocket, to QWERTY keyboards and spreadsheet editors, phone makers and manufacturers were long trying to figure out how to fit the full-size computer (or telephone) experience in a handheld device.

Apple solved that problem for many computing activities, not by finally succeeding, but through a new way to interact with the device.

Now Apple is attempting to reverse that flow. Instead of looking how we interact with large devices and trying to apply it to small devices, Apple is instead looking at how we interact with small devices, and trying to apply it to a larger one.

As small an idea as that might be, it is significant, and has the potential to revolutionize the manner in which we interact with larger devices (regardless of the success of the iPad).

Ms. Jardin’s review makes it clear that they have found some level of success. The user experience is more than just the iPod experience in a larger package — there has been some thought put into how it should be different. This is positive.

But the remainder of Mr. Doctorow’s statements ring true.

Apple is creating a sterilized environment. Only those applications approved by Apple can be loaded to the device, and it cannot be opened for hardware modifications (or even battery changes). This closed environment is more easily accepted on the iPhone; your traditional phone does not need to be “open”. When you move closer to a pure computing environment, it becomes harder to accept a closed environment.

Due to this, in our final analysis Mr. Doctorow’s arguments win the day — we will not be purchasing an iPad. As revolutionary as it may turn out to be, at the end of the day it is only a gadget. There will be second and third generation iPads, where Apple might (we can hope) move to a more open approach. There will be similar devices that run on Operating Systems that are based on Linux or Google technology.

These devices, which are probably a year or two from surfacing, will be different from the iPad. The most notable difference is that we will be able to own them. We will have permission to open them, put what we want on their hard drives, change the batteries.

You can buy an Apple iPad, but you cannot own one.

And that is reason enough not to buy.

When it comes to copyright, the world simply seems to have gone insane.

The UK music industry thinks it loses £200 million each year to piracy. So the UK government is now trying to push through a new set of regulations that would cost £500 million to implement. Which not only does not meet the most basic of cost-benefit analyses, but also would force an estimated 40,000 people offline due to the additional costs that would be passed on to consumers.

Meanwhile, my ISP has promised to start to spy on everything that I download. I cannot recall agreeing to allow them to do this.

But copyright issues in music are old news; the new battle is in books. Book publishers have now realized that many avid readers are now e-book readers, with more to follow on the iPad — now they are beginning to jump into the copyright act. Using the same sorts of measurements that the music and movie industries use, they are claiming to lose $3 billion a year to online piracy. A more interesting analysis takes the same methodology and applies it to libraries, finding that American libraries “cost” the publishing industry nearly $1 trillion every year.

This, of course, demonstrates how silly the claims are. Once one takes into account that those who violate copyright by downloading music, books, or movies are also the industry’s biggest customers, expenditures like those being made in the UK are revealed for being complete farces — rather than protecting profits, it takes away the ability for customers to discover the material in the first place.

There are interesting and sane views out there. Go To Hellman outlines the benefits of library sharing of books. Cory Doctorow discusses the possibility of creating an intelligent copyright system, rather than a one-size-fits-all system that doesn’t work.

None of that intelligent thinking is likely to be finding its way into the Anti-Conterfeiting Trade Agreement, however. The public, of course, is not allowed in on the multilateral negotiations — but big business is. What is sure to emerge are a set of rules to make the demise of the pre-Internet model as painful as possible for consumers and new start-ups, rather than a set of rules that still make sense given the technology available.

And yes, almost all of this has happened during the first 31 days of 2010. And there is no sign that anybody will adopt a system that has any chance of working anytime soon.

(Image from 917press)