{"id":39,"date":"2010-04-13T08:29:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T08:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2010\/04\/ihave-an-ipad-but-at-what-cost.html"},"modified":"2010-04-13T08:29:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-13T08:29:00","slug":"ihave-an-ipad-but-at-what-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/04\/ihave-an-ipad-but-at-what-cost.html","title":{"rendered":"iHave an iPad, but at what Cost?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a new post at Her.meneutics, the women’s blog of Christianity Today. It begins: <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t watch much television in our household, but my husband and I both find ourselves wed to the computer. I was looking through a photo album with our daughter last week, and we came across one from her infancy. She\u2019s swaddled in a pink and white striped blanket, asleep on a pillow between her dad and me. The camera, wielded by my mother, caught both of us on our laptops, typing away. Penny is four now, and her teachers tell me that when she sits at the computer in their classroom, she doesn\u2019t want to play games like the other kids. She wants to type. Or, as she explains, \u201cI want to work like Mom and Dad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"iPad.jpg\"<\/a><\/div>\n

As of last week, our gadgetry consisted of two laptops, two iPhones, an iPod, an iPod Nano, and an older iPhone that we handed down to our children. Even William, 20-months old, is becoming adept at sliding his thumb across the little screen to navigate towards photographs or games. Our kids will grow up with touch-screens as a cultural assumption, as normal as eating soup with a spoon or driving to the store in a car or sleeping in a bed.<\/p>\n

Now we\u2019ve got an iPad too. As far as I can tell, it\u2019s a big and very impressive iPhone. It\u2019s a little heavy, but it moves more quickly than any computer I\u2019ve ever seen. We watched Lost<\/em> on it last week. The picture quality was clear. The screen never skipped or froze, as it often does when we watch on a laptop. As a viewing experience, it was great.<\/p>\n

And yet, I have to wonder: at what cost? Somehow, my husband convinced his employer to buy the iPad for him, so we didn\u2019t shell out the $499. (Last year, he convinced them to buy him a Kindle, so we\u2019ve got that too.) I still haven\u2019t seen his written rationale for the purchase. He tells me the iPad is the wave of the future. He says it will replace laptops and change the way information travels. And he may be right.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

But before we ride that wave to wherever it carries us, I want to stop and think about it…<\/p>\n

To continue reading, click here<\/a>. <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a new post at Her.meneutics, the women’s blog of Christianity Today. It begins: We don\u2019t watch much television in our household, but my husband and I both find ourselves wed to the computer. I was looking through a photo album with our daughter last week, and we came across one from her infancy.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-down-syndrome"],"yoast_head":"\niHave an iPad, but at what Cost? - Thin Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/04\/ihave-an-ipad-but-at-what-cost.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"iHave an iPad, but at what Cost? - Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I have a new post at Her.meneutics, the women’s blog of Christianity Today. 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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}