The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy contained as much information as “several inconveniently large buildings” – but displayed it on a four-inch screen above hundreds of small buttons. Were Douglas Adams writing today, he might have imagined a touchscreen tablet. Certainly the entire consumer electronics industry seems convinced they are the future – inspired both by Amazon's Kindle e-reader and the expectation that Apple will today launch an iSlate/iPad/iCanvas. But in spite of all the hoopla, there are reasons to question tablets' promise.
《銀河系漫游指南》(The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy)包含的信息，可以裝滿“幾座奇大無比的建筑”，卻顯示在一個4英寸的屏幕上，下方是數百個小按鈕。假如道格拉斯?亞當斯(Douglas Adams)是在今天編寫作品，他或許已經想象到了觸摸屏平板電腦。的確，在亞馬遜(Amazon)的Kindle電子閱讀器和預期蘋果(Apple)將于27日推出名為iSlate（或iPad、iCanvas）的平板電腦的雙重鼓舞下，整個消費類電子產品行業看上去已經確信：這類產品就是未來。不過，盡管平板電腦炒得如此火熱，我們仍有理由對它的前景表示懷疑。