Behind iPad Obsession: The Smart Tablet Holy Grail

Jan. 29, 2010 -- What is it about tablets?

Apple's introduction Wednesday of its new iPad -- the jokes have already begun about the name and feminine hygiene -- was just the latest in what has been one of the most enduring obsessions in high tech history.

I'm not sure exactly why tablets are so appealing. Perhaps it's because they harken back to the natural human tendency to write and draw on the nearest flat wall or stone or scrap of wood. Or maybe it's a kind of cultural memory from the days of cuneiform writing on slabs of drying mud, or marking with chalk on a piece of slate in a one-room schoolhouse. Whatever the reason, the dream of a smart, interactive tablet is almost as old as electronics itself.

The first time most of us encountered such a smart pad was, as is often the case, in science fiction -- in particular, "Star Trek" and "2001: A Space Odyssey."

But even then, some very smart dreamers were already at work on developing the real thing. The best known of these was Alan Kay, who, Zelig-like, seemed to always find himself at the hottest places in tech during the '60s, '70s and '80s. First he was at MIT studying under the legendary Marvin Minsky; then at ARPA at the time it was creating the Internet; then at Xerox PARC when it was creating the operating system that would eventually become both the Apple OS and Microsoft Windows; then at Apple under John Sculley as a company fellow.

Along the way, Kay first devised, then became obsessed with, and finally became the leading missionary (some would say Pied Piper) for a kind of smart tablet he called the "Dynabook." Why the Dynabook proved to be such a beguiling notion that it haunted, and still haunts, the electronics industry would be the subject of a great sociology dissertation. Again, I think it has to do with it sitting right at the nexus of what is technologically possible and something deep and elemental in human nature.

Whatever the reason, the Dynabook became a kind of Grail object for the tech world -- and it has spent billions of dollars of the last quarter-century in its pursuit ... with little to show for it.