Fraser Speirs seems to be on to something important about the negative reaction in certain tech circles regarding the iPad. He argues that the device is actually the first solid attempt to make computing simple. And simple computing scares technologists who unconsciously rely on technological complexity to maintain their social and economic status, while paying lip service to ease of use for the tech-challenged masses.  A great essay worth reading in full. And some of the comments are good as well.

Excerpt:

For years we’ve all held to the belief that computing had to be made simpler for the ‘average person’. I find it difficult to come to any conclusion other than that we have totally failed in this effort.

Secretly, I suspect, we technologists quite liked the idea that Normals would be dependent on us for our technological shamanism. Those incantations that only we can perform to heal their computers, those oracular proclamations that we make over the future and the blessings we bestow on purchasing choices.

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With the iPhone OS as incarnated in the iPad, Apple proposes to do something about this, and I mean really do something about it instead of just talking about doing something about it, and the world is going mental.

Not the entire world, though. The people whose backs have been broken under the weight of technological complexity and failure immediately understand what’s happening here.