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iRate Rant: iPad Reveals Apple's Cultural Clogging

No doubt, the iPad has its detractors and ill wishers. Though he concedes that the tablet might be "the greatest toy ever," Aaron Gell, president of Mediaelites.com, is one self-professed iPad Hater. "I hate it and all that it stands for, and I desperately hope it goes the way of the Newton," he confesses in The Huffington Post. Why? Because it proves, once and for all, that Apple is the great Defender-in-Chief of closed networks and walled gardens, i.e., the true enemy of innovation.

"For all the nightmare scenarios about Google, it's now become evident that cheerfully rebellious underdog Apple may actually be the Corporate Beast to fear." "A world class control freak," the "megalomania" of Steve Jobs "could actually have profoundly negative consequences for our culture," Gell suggests. BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow recently made a similar argument that Apple's aversion to open-source networks represents a great threat to invention. "It's not democratic," in Gell's words. "It's for dummies and cultural Pringles-eaters who just want to sit back and take in stuff, not for creators and innovators who want to change the world or make lolcats, as the mood strikes."

Read the whole story at HuffPo and Mediaelites.com »

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