Pro-BlackBerry Obama: iPads, iPods Are 'Distraction'

May 10, 2010— -- When the BlackBerry-toting President Obama took office last year, technophiles around the country hailed him as the first "geek-in-chief."

But this morning the president awoke to the harsh reality that his blogosphere base can be just as fickle as the voters, with some in the tech community calling the president a "hater" for comments he made Sunday labeling some technology a "distraction."

With his reliance on social media, his commitment to appointing a chief technology officer and, of course, his refusal to give-up his BlackBerry, Obama quickly won big points among the nation's tech elite.

That reputation as the tech-friendly commander-in-chief took a hit over the weekend when Obama talked to a group of graduating college seniors at Virginia's Hampton University about the drawbacks of living in a gadget-giddy world.

"You're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank that high on the truth meter," he said during Hampton's commencement ceremony. "And with iPods and iPads; and Xboxes and PlayStations -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation."

"So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it's putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy," he said.

The president's comments caused a bit of a blogosphere brouhaha, with headlines drawing attention to the "hater in chief" and criticizing the president for drinking from the "'information overload' Kool-Aid."

"Having used social networking so heavily in this election campaign, it seems strange that he has turned his back on it so quickly," Stuart Miles, owner and editor of tech blog Pocket-Lint, told ABCNews.com. "Technology has, if you don't filter it, the capabilities to overload you very quickly, but it doesn't always have to be that way."