Well, politically, the iPad won’t have much of an impact, other than potentially (although however unlikely) getting people to read the news more on it.

Socially, the iPad, again, won’t change anything. Tablet computers have been around for a long time, and it is pretty expensive for what it is. Challenges, on the other hand are different. The iPad was introduced as an expensive, new, and unneeded toy in an economically unstable time. People personally have to decide whether they can afford it, or whether they actually want it. In fact, for the most part, the only reason people buy Apple products is because it is an Apple product, regardless of quality.

Economically, it is going through it’s boom stage right now. Money will go from consumers to Apple, which will pay off the debt of making the device, and then turn up some profit. Stores will often gain little-to-no profit from these devices, so it won’t make a huge splash, especially in the long-term. As stated before, people need to decide whether they can afford it or not, and I suppose that’s the only real challenge that can come about in an economic sense.

Psychology, Sociology, and Anthropology are essentially the same thing, with three different groups of people. Psychology refers to the individual, Sociology meaning a group of individuals in a society, and Anthropology being culture at large. Thusly, all three of them can be answered with one line of reasoning. It relates to them in saying that people love to chase brand names, which means they have a connection with the company. Forming a connection with a company means that they are needy, and enjoy connections. What that boils down to is that people have a growing need for relationships, be it with actual people, or even with a faceless entity like Apple. Also, the brand-name thing really embodies capitalism as a whole, but that’s a whole different story. More importantly, the iPad really introduces the concept of instant gratification to us, yet again. People don’t want to have a collection of books that they have to look through, or actually even turn the pages anymore. They want a one-paged book that can give you the definition of a word at the touch. On that matter, also, people want to remain ignorant, using nothing but their hands to control things, without even a simple understanding of how a touch screen works.

Sorry if that sounded rant-like, and hope that helps, with your homework I assume!

You may have a better luck in getting answers if you post it under the “Social Sciences” forums.

There is a lot of hoopla, but tablet-based PCs have been around for a while and life still goes on as usual.

Ignore the punters. Most of the changes will social, but meaningful social impact will change politics.

The problem with computers and software design right now is that it is still controlled by people who oddly value complexity and opacity, simply because many of the tools used to create devices are themselves complex and opaque. Yet the overwhelming majority of people who use computers do not care, not do they have to care, about CPU speeds, RAM, backside bus speeds, serial ports or CMOS batteries. It’s simply irrelevant what the specs of the hardware are to people who simply want to create and/or consume digital media, be it art, entertainment, or ideas.

The iPad is the first true multimedia device designed expressly to be used by people with little or no technical knowledge. And the technology obsessed can jump up and down all they want about tech specs and tinkering and other esoterica, but the fact of the matter is that no one has to know anything about an automatic transmissions to get the kids to school, drive daily to work or assist in the construction of a building. There will always be a requirement for specialised knowledge, and those people will always be around to design, repair and maintain technology. But millions of people go about important work everyday and they have absolutely no requirement whatsoever to understand or be able to repair and/or modify the automatic transmission, and they should not be required to do so.

Yet for 20 years many of the purveyors of technological progress have been incapable of producing powerful technology that is also simple to use because they have spent little or no time to approach development from a usability standpoint.

Except for Apple. And once people begin to see the power of technology that anyone can use, they will migrate towards other technologies that put ease of use over meaningless tech specs and port overload. Think of how many people using standard PCs have almost magical beliefs about hardware because of the temperamental nature of the technology, and how this limits their thinking with regards to the application of technology. Is it any wonder that their are people still filling out pay stubs and sales sheets by hand when they don’t trust the technology that’s forced upon them, with a set of arcane and pointless rules only required because the technology is purposely designed to be arcane?

“Potential. Promise. Hope. That, if anything, is the real magic of it. In the meantime, it’s off to a pretty good start.”

Do you remember the iMac? The first one? It was the first indication that Apple was back under Steve Jobs’ control. It heralded something new for Apple, and something new for personal computing. Not the colours, eventually they went away. And it wasn’t what it had for specs, it’s what it was missing: a floppy, and serial ports. Think how long it took for the industry to get rid of that junk. Up until last year we could still get Dell servers with PS2 ports. More than 10 years after Jobs showed the way, motherboards were cluttered with the detritus of dead technologies. All in the interest of not upsetting anyone.

The attacks on the iMac’s lack of a floppy (a technology outdated and all but useless even then) were shrill and ridiculous then. How do they look now with gigabit network connections and 16 gig USB sticks that fit on a keychain?

But where this ties in with the iPad is this: that first iMac was using a Powerbook motherboard. Was the iMac a Hail Mary? Even in retrospect it seems like it. And how much development, hardware design coding was saved by using essentially off the shelf parts? Probably quite a bit. But it didn’t matter, because the iMac was not a new piece of hardware so much as a new concept of the home computer. That of the computer as an appliance, as many writers on tech blogs and elsewhere have discussed, some with praise, some with disgust. The iMac got custom hardware and it began it’s evolution to the glass and aluminum beauty we can buy today. But it never changed from that original concept. Plug it in, turn it on. And with Bluetooth, and WiFi, you were down to one plug.

So now we have the iPad. And what is it, essentially? It’s a large iPod Touch. Is there anywhere in computing and software design where the principles of evolution are so eloquently expressed? Take what works, expand on it, and ruthlessly cleave away that which no longer serves a purpose. Apple forced the rapid adoption of USB. It will probably force its demise, and force the wider adoption of wireless technologies. And as one online pundit already stated, much of the violent opposition (some anti-iPad articles practically seethe, and they hadn’t even so much as seen one!) to the iPad is nothing less than future shock. Are we even capable of imagining what the PC landscape might look like without Apple? I certainly can’t, but I know we’d be even further behind without Jobs dragging us kicking and screaming

“IPAD” impact on political, social and economical ways is insubstantial outside a few rich cities of the US (elsewhere, even less). even in these cities, the effects would be pretty minimal considering theconomicic climate. The people really affected will be the macheads, some rich kids and young professionals (man-kids), about 10% of the population of the richer cities in the US.
In more specific terms, the effects may be like this –
Psychology: A new class of Ipad “haves” and have-nots”, with con-comittant use of the Ipad as an object of social power and snobbery. The distance between people who can afford useless shit versus those who lack basic necessities (like a job) will widen.
Social: All the hoopla about the Ipad in the media sounds like it is a “real” harbinger of change. However, even the Ipod/ iphone really did not have any large lasting effect in the society. The Ipad is even more of a meaningless gizmo in broader social terms.
Anthropology: Seriously?

Not much at all,it’s only going to make communications better.