The 24th Century Came Early!

Lord knows the world doesn't need another blog entry about Apple and the iPad, but I thought of this a couple days ago and had to mention it.

When I first saw images of the iPad online, something about it seemed familiar to me, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Then it hit me– I'd seen the iPad before… in the 24th century!

On all the Star Trek series from The Next Generation on, you'd always see various crew members diddling around with a device called a PADD. It was a flat, tablet sized portable computing device with a touch screen interface that could display video and information. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it?

Funny how many of pieces of Star Trek technology have made their way into our lives already, 300 years ahead of schedule. I'm still waiting for a transporter though, so I don't have to sit on a plane for 26 hours when I want to visit China.