We are surrounded by Magic - Virginia Postrel on the iPad.

Of course we've always been surrounded by magic, just never before has so much of it been man made.  It truly is an amazing world.

With its utterly opaque yet seemingly transparent design, the iPad affirms a little-recognized fact of the supposedly "disenchanted" modern world. We are surrounded by magic. Clarke's Law applies not just to technology from advanced alien civilizations but to the everyday components of our own. We live in a culture made rich by specialization, with enormous amounts of knowledge embedded in the most everyday of artifacts.

HT