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Tuesday, October 24, 2006
"When I was your age, television was called books"
And an iPod was called a Walkman. The first one I had looked like this:
and the little orange headphones were every bit as distinctive and ubiquitous as the white ear buds are today. I later had a Walkman 10 that was the epitome of technology because when the tape was removed it closed up to the same size as a cassette tape case which meant you could store it right in the same tape carrier as you stored the tapes themselves. (I hadn't really thought how funny it now seems to lug around 40 hours of music in what was essentially a little cloth or plastic attaché case.)
If you haven't heard, the iPod is 5 years old this week and quite a few folks have decided that calls for an article on the subject. I most enjoyed this one in Salon. A long discussion of why iPods are not, after all, the best thing ever is followed by this:
Because here's the thing about the iPod, its transcendent reason for success, more important than its design, its interface, Apple's marketing, or Jobs' charisma: Sometimes, it can just stop you cold. This is more a function of the music than the device, perhaps, and if you think about it the chill really has to do with your mood, and where you are, and what you're doing, and who you're thinking about, and probably the weather... But sometimes, things align just right, and a song comes on, and the music and the world around you seem to sync up in a kind of cosmic way.
[W]hen this happens, the music becomes a "soundtrack" for the scenery, which is a good way to put it. The iPod turns ordinary life -- riding the bus, waiting in line at the post office, staring at a spreadsheet for 12 hours a day -- into cinema. Levy describes the work of sociologist Michael Bull, who, when studying the habits of fans of the iPod's great ancestor the Sony Walkman, found that people liked to think of themselves "as imaginary movie stars" playing out scenes dictated by the music in their ears. One subject who listened to music from spaghetti westerns said that the Walkman turned him into a "verbal bounty hunter" bent on firing "short cool blasts of verbal abuse" at his co-workers. The science fiction writer William Gibson once described the Walkman as having done "more to change human perception than any virtual reality gadget. I can't remember any technological experience that was quite so wonderful as being able to take music and move it through landscape and architecture." The iPod, with its greater capacity, alters perception even more profoundly; when the right song comes on, the world actually feels different.
I think that's exactly right and I have not come across a better description of just what all the fuss is about. I even have my own perfect example of iPod music making life imitate art, tho this only really makes sense if you are a fan of "Lost in Translation". To make a long story short, I had been in Argentina working on a research project for a few weeks and was heading back to Buenos Aires for my flight home. I had been staying on the coast and it was about a four hour cab ride to B.A. which I was undertaking on about 3 hours sleep since I had been out with my Argentinean friends until about 4:30 that morning. I was sharing the cab with a British friend of mine from Bermuda who, tho a charming and witty fellow, looks nothing like Scarlett Johansson, and who had been asleep for the last two hours as we reached the city limits. I had my iPod on and was resting my head against the cab window as tall building I didn't recognize and signs I couldn't read began to pass by. A couple quick spins and, click, "Just Like Honey" by The Jesus and Mary Chain. Perfect, just the perfect feeling, if you know the scene.
So, anyway, happy birthday iPod, I guess.
What, you didn't expect me to use this photo, did you?
(BTW, I have a blue iPod Mini, and in that great Apple attention to detail when you plug one of those into your Mac the icon that pops up will always match the color of your iPod.)
