Interview: Author Susan Orlean on her life with the iPad

08.08.2010

Well, I think you can look at it in a really positive way, which is, as computers get simpler and simpler which is one version of describing this. It's the simplest and most accessible way of interacting with the Internet.

So I think that it could be a fantastic opportunity to open up that window for people in cultures where...most people in most cultures are far more used to living on their cell phone than we are in a sense.

And for them it may just be a very natural evolution but it gives them an opportunity to access things that they may not otherwise have available.

I was really interested in this One Laptop Per Child movement, because I think the more people are not able to get online, the more they will be left out of the future, and growth, and the world marketplace, because so much stuff is gravitating there.

It did seem to me an incredibly smart way of attacking the problem of lack of development in certain countries. You got to be able to get people online.