An iPad is time. It’s the time between classes, the time waiting for class to start, the time waiting in line, the time that is normally wasted on some activity that requires virtually no attention, that is merely a buffer, a loading screen. This is when I reach for a phone, or an iPad, and make use of the time which would have been wasted, and in this sense an iPad brings efficiency to life: it makes me better at the expense of nothing valuable. This is perhaps the largest difference modern technology brings: with the advent of easily transportable mobile computers time, whether spent on work or entertainment, is never farther than my pocket. This had made me both more mobile, and more willing to put up with the little annoyances in life since I can retreat into a screen.

I have gotten a surprising range of comments on my iPad, all the more surprising because I already owned an iPad beforehand, and yet it seems as if my iPad is now open for comment. They’ve ranged from the envious to the praising, from the curious to the crucial, and from among these critical comments I select one to rebut. Specifically, that it was a sign of my generation’s need for ‘instant gratification’. Patience is, after all a virtue. But waiting is not. A love of waiting is as ruinous as a hate of it, since the key to patience is the right time, not before, but certainly not after. The iPad, like a cell phone, like indeed a regular phone, like indeed the postal service, like a thousand inventions and devices before it, simply makes things easier, more convenient, and faster.

I like to imagine a man making the same complaints made of us to a telegrapher, or perhaps even a man who prefers heralds complaining about letter writing, “You and your need for ‘one month gratification!”. It has not changed my wants, my desires, or the fact I really hate boredom. It has merely given me the means to alleviate such. It is a tool, and frankly that is all it could ever be, a tool.

At least until the robot takeover begins.