I think the Ipad is one of the most remarkable pieces of technology I have seen in my lifetime, a creative legacy for the genius who imagined it and created it – Steve Jobs. My use of the Ipad has increased continuously since I bought it two years ago – I have drawn on it, checked my e-mail, taken it on book tours, taken photos and videos, browsed sites, checked news and weather, explored the Internet, shopped for books and many other things. I have recommended it enthusiastically to many people.

In the past few weeks and months, though, I have become increasingly uncomfortable with this miraculous device and the ways in which it is affecting and changing me. I find myself checking it every day. I am bombarded with corporate messages urging me to buy things, challenging me to download things, alerting me to news and weather that makes me uncomfortable, and that I don’t really want or need to see. I am turning it on too much, it sometimes seems an extension of my hand. It also has been making me edgy, I think, allowing me to tap into things that fuel fear and anger and restlessness. I don’t need to be offered a 100 videos a day of people dying, setting themselves on fire, being bombed and beaten, murdered and burned.

I used the Ipad to donate money to victims of Hurricane Sandy and I rationalized turning it on all day because someone as important and interactive as me needed to be checking his Ipad. It made me feel important, in touch. My editors and publicists need to reach me after, so I had to carry the Ipad around with me. It was only in the past few weeks that I realized that my editors and publicists rarely need to reach me, and I am not so important that I need to be checking my e-mail all day. It is one of the great and unwavering laws of technology – the more you have, the more you use, the more e-mails you read, the more you answer. I am drowning in the machinations of Corporate America – Plaid Friday, Cash Mobs, Gray Thursday, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the Ipad has become a transmitter of a vast universe that wants to sign me up, take my money, and give me much more information than I want or need or is good for me.

I don’t want to live that kind of life. I don’t need to be in touch all the time. I have little money these days to buy more things at discounts that I don’t really need either. I’ve gotten a dozen messages flaunting expensive new cameras at great prices when I have a perfectly good camera and am taking photos I like. The Ipad is tapping into the anxiety that runs below my surface. I don’t need to see a video of every person bombed or killed on the earth either. So I am moving to a new relationship with my Ipad as of today. I will use it when I am traveling. Playing some  games. Buying a book for my Kindle Paperwhite. Ordering things we need that are not available locally. I will check e-mail on my computer once or twice a day – I have cable, it is easy enough to do. I will acknowledge that I don’t need to be that much in touch, don’t need that much information, don’t need that many offers of things to buy.

I love my Ipad but we are now going to spend a lot less time together. Technology demands this – we have to think about it, every day as our space and privacy and peace of mind are invaded, and brutalized by the boundless greed of the Corporate Nation. It is not the Ipad’s fault, it is mine, and I will respond to it.

Thinking is my bread and butter and the Ipad, along with many other things are making it hard to do.