more on charlie's ipod essay

This was composed as a comment to a post Charlie made on his blog about his iPod essay, but LiveJournal barked at me and said it was too long, so I guess I’ll post it here. If you missed it, go read Charlie’s essay first, or a lot of what follows won’t make sense (besides which, it’s a good piece, it doesn’t need my commentary). Also, in a couple of places, I refer to “you” … that means “Charlie,” like I say, this started as a comment on his blog.

[ed. note: I've changed the link, as Charlie's original essay is now in a fee-based archive ... what you get in the above link is another copy, which as far as I can tell is the same.]

I come at this as a participant in the portable MP3 culture, but not an iPod owner. My first MP3 player was a Diamond Rio 500, in 1999, only a year after the first portable MP3 player had been introduced. I can still remember the resistance Robin put up to my desire to own one ... she didn't know what MP3s were, and certainly didn't think they were the Next Big Thing. (The Rio 500 had a whopping 64MB of memory.) Later I got a Rio Karma (about which more in a second), and now I have my first flash MP3 player, a Sansa e260.

I go into detail here for a couple of reasons. First, you note that "iPod" is "close to" being a word like Xerox or Kleenex ... I'd say this happened some time ago. When I had my Rio 500, it was so unusual that people didn't bother to ask me what it was, if that makes sense. When I got my Rio Karma (and now with my Sansa e260), people do ask, but if they don't know what it is, the simplest and most understandable explanation is "it's like an iPod," while those in the know just ask "why don't you get an iPod?" As you note, iPods matter even to those who don't own one ... if I say to such a person "I have an MP3 player," they may blink with incomprehension, but if I just lie and say "I have an iPod," they know right away what I'm talking about.

Second, it's long been my contention that the digital audio player world offers an Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole version of the computer world. In computing, Microsoft (and Windows) are the giant elephant in the room. "Everybody" runs Windows, even though many believe Mac OS are better. The ubiquity of Windows in the marketplace means Mac users often have to scramble to get software etc ... while Mac users are tenacious and the Mac community does a great job of getting stuff out to the users, I nonetheless hear about once a week "I can't use it, it won't run on a Mac," while I rarely hear the same about Windows.

Well, in the digital player world, Apple is Microsoft, and everyone else is Apple. The iPod and its Apple variants are ubiquitous ... "everybody" has one. Downloads from the iTunes store often won’t work on anything but an iPod or iTunes. Nonetheless, many believe other players are better. A good example is the aforementioned Rio Karma. It was the ultimate player for geeks ... it did a gazillion more things than the iPod, and did them better. (Examples would include the variety of files it would play besides MP3s, including arcane stuff like Ogg Vorbis, and the complexity of the built-in equalizer, which not only had five adjustable bands but also the ability to set zero on each band to whatever you wanted ... I don't even know if I'm saying this right, I just copied someone else's setting, but you get the point.) Let me put it this way: there is a webpage titled "1000 Things About the Rio Karma" which is "A collection of geeky details about the hardware, software, operation, and design of the Rio Karma."

The Karma wasn't perfect, or I'd still have mine. The hard drives were cranky, meaning I went through two myself, and the market is so dominated by Apple that Rio probably didn't stand a chance (they no longer exist, which is why when my Karma died a second time, I had nowhere to go). The point, though, is that the Rio Karma was to iPods as Macs are to Windows machines: better but less popular. (The Karma was even butt-ugly, which kinda helped its geek factor.)

This is getting long, I shoulda made it a post on my own blog [ed. note: I did!]. I think your basic argument in the piece is right on target, and your connection of the iPod's release and continued success in the post-9/11 world makes a lot of sense. If I wasn't on meds, though, I'd strongly disagree with the notion that DAP users are monstrous. First, just in the context of Annalee's remarks, iPods are no different than prior portable players ... they are technological devices to allow public listening in private (or is that private listening in public?). Your discussion of how important it is that iPods hold so much material compared to Walkmen (so that we can bring home along with us) is crucial, but that iPods are technological doesn't really separate them from earlier devices. So if iPods make us into monsters, so did Walkmen.

But there's more. Annalee is as technologically savvy as anyone I know, so I'm not really talking about her when I say that there is some unfortunate demonizing going on here. You are right to focus on the way portable players serve to cut us off from others ... that is an important difference between now and back in the day. Having said that, and acknowledging that the earbuds isolate us, I'd just add that long before Sony and Apple, there were people who went out in public and read books. If you spoke to them, they could hear you, to be sure. But oftentimes the last thing they wanted was to communicate with others. The community/isolation trick you talk about (going out in public, then shutting out the world) is easier and more efficient in the iPod era, but I think there's a fear of technology underscoring the idea that people with white earphones are somehow more anti-social than the book readers of an earlier cafe culture.

Comments

[Charlie Bertsch]

Thanks for the long and thoughtful comments and the fact that you were willing to put them here on your own blog.

I agree completely about the Apple-as-elephant-in-the-room-analogy.

As far as the demonization goes, I did have some reservations about making such a strong argument, as I noted in my Live Journal entry about the piece. I do think, though, that, even if there's not a qualititative difference between listening to an iPod in public and reading a book in publics, that there's definitely a quantitative one. Book readers are easier to rouse with conversation than those using digital music players. The degree of withdrawal is less pronounced with reading.

And then there's the question of whether one lets others know what one is doing privately in public. Most book readers do not conceal what they are reading. You can see who's reading what on a plane or in a café if you desire and, if you're interested, ask the person about the book. With a digital music player, that basic information is almost always missing. Sure, you can ask someone to tell you what they are listening to, after waving your hands to get their attention etc. But the conversation starter is concealed.

Maybe that distinction I just isolated does qualify as a qualitative one after all. I'm not sure. I'm inclined to think that it doesn't, but that it increases the magnitude of the quantitiative distinction. What do you think?

[Steven Rubio]

It's funny, what you say about the conversation starter. I would LOVE IT if someone came up to me and asked what I was listening to. And this comes from a hermit who is quite content to have a technological device that allows me to be out in public without actually interacting with people. But the solipsist in me wants to show off my cool listening habits. Which, of course, I've been discussing here of late, since all those software programs are telling me my listening habits aren't cool at all. I envision someone stopping me on the street and saying "whatcha listening to" and my answering "The Streets, it's this English guy who kinda raps and talks about his life as a bloke" ... but in truth, if someone did ask what I was listening to and I was honest, it appears my answer would be "uh, 'Embryonic Journey.'" (Song I'm listening to as I type this is Steely Dan.) (And if I stopped someone on the street and asked them what they were listening to and they said Steely Dan, I'd think they were fossils.)

[Steve]

Very interesting discussion. I certainly agree with Charlie's point that the Ipod (and related portable sound devices) have an isolating effect (and, arguably, purpose). This is a characteristic of most "new" media forms and delivery modes; the emphasis is on the personalization of experience, which can bring with it more isolation, fragmentation, and spatial separation. We're rapidly moving beyond the Carey/Newcomb era in which a central mass medium (TV) can be regarded as a shared national hearth.

While Charlie's negative spin on this experiential shift is entirely plausible, I have to say that I'm not at all sure of its ultimate consequences. I would add to the discussion, though, the point that these experiences and the nature of this shift may be inflected differently in different places. I live in Hong Kong, where to venture out of the home is (unless you're in a country park) to subject yourself to inevitably crowded public spaces and a decibel level that often makes normal conversation difficult. That is, being out and about here normally is at best a hectic experience and at worst downright unpleasant. This includes the local Starbucks and other coffee shops, in which the atmosphere is more McDonald's on a Sunday afternoon than anything remotely resembling a quiet, relaxed oasis.

Also, the average Hong Kong family lives in a flat that averages less than 500 square feet, meaning that most people don't have much in the way of personal space, much less privacy at home. Many of my students not only do not have their own room, they don't have a desk or any other convenient flat surface that they can dedicate to their work. In this situation, getting out of the house can be a crucial ingredient in simply staying sane, even if most public situations don't afford any more privacy (or even a place to sit--there are urban parks in HK, but you're generally not allowed on the grass).

In this situation, I'd argue, using a private, portable sound device makes plenty of therapeutic sense. I know that I utterly appreciate the sense of relative isolation I feel when my body is sardined into a subway train, but if I close my eyes my head is full of music or yakking that I find interesting. It beats listening to one side of at least three simultaneous cell phone conversations in a language I don't understand. (Actually, I find the portability of phone conversations far more annoying in the US, precisely because I CAN understand what's being said. This aggressive--I would characterize it as hostile--invasion of public space by the solipsistic private self is a whole 'nother wrinkle of this discussion, I think.)

So my annoyance with Ipods (as a specific brand, not a generic identity) is perhaps more parochial. In HK, we can't use iTunes because we're all pirates in this part of the world, but even if I could, I wouldn't. I'll stop buying CDs when Steve Jobs gives me control of the music, etc. I pay for. And I'll keep buying direct from artists. And I'll keep using AllofMP3.com because (as Steven has summarized so well) it's the most end-user-friendly online business model out there. And I hate it that Jobs has me locked in as an Ipod consumer in perpetuity, thanks to the 8500 songs I've committed to putting on this non-interoperable device. I like my Ipod fine, but if ever there was a case of the law of the suppression of radical potential being invoked, this is it.

[Charlie Bertsch]

Great points, both of you.

Steven: I know you'd want someone to ask, but I do think there's a stigma attached to asking about what's concealed from view that is not as palpable when asking about what can readily be seen. You might even argue that wanting to be asked about what's hidden plays into a passive-aggressive dynamic, though I wouldn't go that far. . . :-)

Steve: What you're saying about Hong Kong makes total sense to me. I think that need to get out of the house or office to "stay sane" is a factor even in spacious American exurbia. But I also think that the kind of highly concentrated urban experience you get in a place like Hong Kong, Tokyo, NYC, London, Cairo or Mumbai has been at the leading edge of the destruction of truly private private space since it first appeared. That is, the threat to "home" felt by residents of that sort of place was already likely to inspire a sense of solitude compromised long before the technological means of carving out private space in public were there. I mean, that's what led to the creation of suburbs in the first place, no? So maybe what devices like the iPod and their (anti-)social uses bear witness to is the creation of virtual densities -- informational? -- that mirror the physical densities of urban experience. More and more of us live in cities of the mind, in other words.

[Steve]

Your point about the origin of suburbs is dead on, and, interestingly enough, 'burbs are on the rise in Shanghai, Beijing, and other Chinese megacities. It's yet another unanticipated consequence of the reform era, which has created a monied class (as well as an increasingly massive income gap that would warm the heart of any good neocon) with disposable income for stuff like more spacious housing. And you ought to see these places: they look like Celebration, Florida on mushrooms.

And the idea of "cities of the mind" makes me think about the ways this technological and social transformation is resulting in both new kinds of public isolation and new kinds of private community (or, simply, the dissolution of boundaries between public and private). The former is what we're talking about here. For the latter, think of the trajectory from MUDs to WoW and other online environments that are part game, part Snow Crash. (Have you seen the WoW "rape in cyberspace" moment, captured on video? Members of one clan invaded an online funeral being held by members of another clan for a member who died IN REAL LIFE, and proceeded to slaughter the funeral attendees.) What unites these apparently divergent tendencies is the turn away from engagement with the lived, everyday world, and what I'm still fuzzy on is the implications of the ways in which people are negotiating the relationship between virtual spaces/actions and physical ones.

[Jonathan]

Wow.

I don't know how I missed the piece the first time but this is a very interesting conversation. Charlie -- you should definitely expand that Tikkun piece into an academic article. There's more to it than a lot of what's being written right now on portable players.

I'll have to write more when I'm not about to go do a hundred things, but a few scattered thoughts:

--portable players do sonically isolate their users, but in a way that's been around at least since the invention of the stethoscope. In other words, it's not particularly new

--most of the debates about privacy and publicity forget two things: 1) that everything being said about portable players now was said about transistor radios and walkmen and 2) that contexts of transportation and commuting, the stereotypical urban space of the ipod listener (anyway) are already alienated (as Steve pointed out). Schivulbusch's book on train travel points this out nicely: time in transit isn't public time, it's dead time. That's why people started reading, and so I do think earbud listening is structurally more akin to reading in public than it's given credit for. Which isn't to say that it isn't a form of disengagement from your immediate surroundings, only that there's been a pretty steady history of that ever since people stopped reading out loud to each other.

Best,
--J

[Charlie Bertsch]

More excellent points, Steve. And it's nice to see you here, Jonathan.

Obviously, the challenge with capturing the non-novel "novelty" of the iPod phenomenon is striking a balance between historical myopia and the paralysis of the x-is-just-like-y-before-it approach.

I mean, there's nothing truly new about the iPod, but I still want to insist that the particular conjuncture in which it emerged gives its qualities, already present with earlier technology, a different spin. And I do think that there's a link between the explosion in iPod-usage and the threats to home of our post-9/11 era, acknowledging that those threats to home are themselves more of the same, only more so