Amid Wednesday's frenzied news day of Apple's iPad reveal and President Obama's impending State of the Union address, a friend's Facebook status update caused me to pause. “Are we citizens or consumers? People much more excited about Steve Jobs' speech than Obama's State of the Union.”

I suddenly felt guilty for tuning in to both a live blog and live video stream of the iPad address. But although I was enthralled with the land of Jobs that afternoon, I still planned ...