Lifting all the boats

I heard an interesting thought on a podcast:

"iPad is a rising tide which lifts all the boats." 

It's attributed to J.F. Kennedy (though he didn't say it about the iPad!), and I think this is a very healthy way of viewing things, and a true one. The Kindle and the iPad are creating many, many more opportunities than they are threatening.
If you're holding on to your pet rock for dear life, you may have trouble, of course.

All right, admittedly you're not in an easy position if you're in a business which has depended on print and distribution of print, and it's hard luck for the staff. But it's for sure that an attitude looking for opportunities will do you a lot more good than a victim attitude.

The ereaders/tablets in general and the iPad in particular is not just a hugely successful product, which in itself is a very good thing for society, it is also a uniquely enabling product. We have a whole new kind of publishing platform in our hands, literally, lord knows what it can do over time. And that's not even considering the multitude of other things it can do and be used for, the industries it helps and the smaller industries it has created.

Back in 2000, I was thinking about what would replace newspapers and magazines, and I visualized something very much like the iPad. (Though a bit larger and lighter, but that'll come.) I didn't think it would take ten years before something like it arrived. And if not for Apple, lord knows how long it would have taken, everybody else had failed miserably up til then.