• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 6, 2011

Remember the scene in Woody Allen's classic "Sleeper" in which he wakes up in the oh-so-distant-future and winds up in a cocktail party where attendees pass around the "orb," a devices that gives drug-like pleasure to all the people touching it? That's what tablet computers, or least iPads, are like today, according to The Hyperfactor Chief Derek Handley.

Speaking on a panel at OMMA Tablet Revolution, Handley was trying to explain the power of tablets to a real skeptic - me - and used the example of people who were gathered at a cocktail party who had to touch and share the device, passing it around to each other much the way Allen's future characters might have. That makes sense, an goes a long way toward explaining the iPad's success: It's a drug that intoxicates its users.