Topic for Discussion:
Just about everyone these days has an iPod or some other portable music player. Any thoughts on this? Or, as my project progresses, any thoughts on my thoughts?
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Posted at Feb 21/2006 11:37AM:
Arielle Lasky: My friend wrote a column for the Daily last spring, and she did an article about the iPod and people waking to class with their iPods. You should try to find it. Search the Daily website for "Emily Wood" and iPod.
Posted at Feb 23/2006 03:52PM:
Stefan Vraspir: I was just thinking about your title, and about how having an iPod does make me happier...for example: I love to take walks. Especially now that I'm in college, it's nice to get out away from campus for a while and walk out through the neighborhoods. Having an iPod helps make this process even more enjoyable. The ability to not just carry around music, but all the music I own in such a small container makes it easy to just decide to go walk for an hour, something that I might not have the patience or desire to do if it weren't for my iPod.
Posted at Feb 26/2006 12:47PM:
[afashoro]: I love my iPod and listen to it all the time especially when I'm walking to class or other places on campus. Music is very important to me and helps calm me or get excited for the day depending on what kind of music I am listening to at the time. I especially like to listen to it before going to class because it gets me excited and ready. Before I had my iPod, I didn't look forward to going to class but now that I have it, I look forward to going to my class in the morning.
Posted at Feb 27/2006 07:06PM:
Kareem Yasin: I can't really imagine what it would be like to be listening to your iPod all the time. Listening while going to class seems rather inconvenient. To be honest, I only listen to my iPod on planes or when at work for 2+ hour blocks of time. Nevertheless, my iTunes is almost always open whenever I'm at my desk or when writing papers at the library. It actually kind of scares me. I find myself conciously isolating myself from roommates and others in my room. I think it might be a way in which we see we can exert some control on our lives, that being on what we're hearing.
Posted at Mar 01/2006 01:18PM:
roby: I'm always of two minds about the whole listening-while-you-walk thing. For sure it's enjoyable and relaxing, but I do think there's something slightly creepy about our increasing inability to deal with silence. Obviously, cell phones were the first technology that made this visible - once they started being really common, you really stopped seeing people just walking down the street; they always had to be talking on the phone. Now there's a split between the Phone People and the Ipod People - but the Silence People are a quickly-diminishing minority. I like to walk around stuck to my Ipod as much as the next person, but I do think there's a weird paradoxical disconnect between taking a walk to soak up a neighborhood and keeping one of your senses completely out of that experience.
Posted at Mar 02/2006 12:08AM:
Evan Pivonka: thanks for all the great comments everybody! as to the last one regarding keeping senses out of an experience, check out
iPod Journal #6... the beauty of the iPod is that it can disarm more than just your sense of sound if you'd like it to!
Here are some comments that I've pasted from my front page... I'd like to keep them here if possible... Thanks everybody!
Posted at Feb 21/2006 11:30AM:
[klfsong]: How has the Ipod inpacted the music industry? Do you feel bad when you rip a song off the internet?
Posted at Feb 24/2006 08:28PM:
Evan Pivonka: In all honesty, I buy all of my music from the iTunes music store and don't download any illegaly... partially just because I think it's wrong, but mostly because I own a bunch of Apple stock... But as for it's impact on the music industry, I think it's clear that the iTunes music store, which just surpassed it's Billionth song download yesterday, has done an incredible job in making music more accessible...
Posted at Feb 26/2006 04:23PM:
Daniel Steinbock: What does it mean for music to be "accessible"? Does digital rights management (DRM) -- technology used by iTunes and others to prevent duplication of the music you buy -- make music more accessible? Arguably, charging $10 - $20 for an album, requiring identity registration and credit card information, is not as "accessible" as an anonymous free download of pirated music or ripping your roommate's cd collection. I think the reason why music piracy continues to be so rampant is because it is far more "accessible" than spending thousands of dollars on DRM-protected music that restricts the devices on which you can play the music you paid for. You can play CDs on any cd player. Is that more accessible? There isn't a black and white answer...but it's clear that the "freedom" to carry thousands of songs in your pocket has been matched by the removal of other "freedoms", all in order to maintain the corporate record companies' status quo business model. Uh oh, here comes the podcast.
Posted at Feb 28/2006 10:35AM:
Evan Pivonka: I guess by "accessible", I meant "legally accessible". T.V.'s are much more accessible if you simply break into people's houses and steal them rather than go to Best Buy to purchase them. I hate to get on a high horse about this, but the last time I checked, preventing someone from breaking the law and providing a more user-friendly way of legally engaging in the same activities isn't often regarded as a "removal" of "freedoms"...
Posted at Mar 07/2006 09:10PM:
roby: Another thing I was thinking about has to do with another form of Ipod media - the podcast. I've been switching to podcasts for a lot of my news and commentary over the past few months, and while I think it's a terrific and powerful information source, there's also a down-side. When I got my news/commentary from a more tied-down source (from my computer or traditional print media), I was always absorbing information in a place that I could look up corroboration, other commentary, more in-depth information, etc. while I listened. With my Ipod, though, I can listen to these shows anywhere (which is great) but that means I'm hardly ever listening to them anywhere I can fact-check (which isn't so great). It's just another aspect of the "island" you make yourself into with your roaming Ipod. It's an interesting combination of increased and decreased control over my information world.
Posted at Mar 12/2006 06:54PM:
Evan Pivonka: Regarding the podcast, i'm having the same problem... I'm finding listening to stuff on the iPod much more useful for fun shows like "This American Life" or "Science Fridays" rather than actual hard news... Something where you can just sit back and enjoy learning something while you're trudging through 500 lines of Greek :-)
