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The new Tron Legacy trailer looks terrific. The graphics are incredible, we get to see old characters in a new setting, and there are mysterious things happening. That’s a recipe for success.

But what I want to know is why do we see Sam pull out a Tron game (at :45 in)?

What is a Tron game doing in a Tron movie? What happens in this game? Was it, itself, about a Tron movie that was embedded in the Tron movie we’re watching? Are the events of the Tron movie in the Tron world considered to be real? Did Flynn create the game (and possibly the movie) based on his experience? Is the embedded Tron movie in some way autobiographical in the context of the film?

I’m sure the filmmakers included the game at least partly because it was such a mainstay of arcades in the early 80s, but it sure opens a bucket of narrative worms. They should have just called the video game “Light Cycles” or something, because it sure puts the internal narrative of the movie on shaky ground.

I desire Courier in a way I crave few things. I’ve decided to buy an iPad because I have clients who are interested in it and it’s part of my job to understand what it’s like to use one, but I don’t dream about using it. I do dream about developing for it, but a lot of what I dream about building is just a slightly different take on what Courier is already doing, or at least demonstrating.

I don’t think of myself as an Apple fanboy, but I sure seem to use a lot of Apple products. I was the first in my company to use a Mac for my work machine, and two years later almost everyone in my group is using one. My personal life and my career have been moving away from the Microsoft gravity well over the last few years, and I really didn’t forsee this changing. I’m as surprised as anyone.

And it’s really about the notebook aspects. Putting things into a personal journal just seems so final, so insular. Once I write something down how will I search it? How will I find it again? How will I back it up? If what I’m dealing with is paper then the answers to all those questions are not what I want to hear.

With the Courier, though, I’m extrapolating functionality based on a few tech demos and some screenshots, but it looks like I’ll be able to create a daily journal that I can add web pages to, that I can copy online photos and paste them into, that I can take pictures with, and that I can draw in. I’m also assuming that I can publish anything I create to… something. Maybe to my main computer. Maybe to a special website that Microsoft hosts. Maybe to my own website.

It’s obviously going to depend on what the actual device is like. I’m also assuming that the Courier is not going to work very well with a Mac, that there’s going to be no crossover between content on the Courier and content in my iPhone, and that there will be massive, deal-breaking problems with the Courier’s software that will keep me from buying it.

We’ll see where all of this goes. Maybe there will be a Courier-inspired app that I can use on my iPad, or maybe Microsoft will come through and build a device that’s the first in a truly new category. But either way I want to interact with digital objects in ways that are analogous to how I interact with physical objects. I want to be able to be able to build meaningful digital content in new ways. I don’t want to click on fiddly little menus and UI objects that are meant to be clicked with a mouse.

I want to live in the future.