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Attack
of the Pod People
It
was inevitable, of course—though we might have expected it
a little sooner. Finally, the anti-iPod backlash has begun.
Sure, they originally debuted back in 2001 and, yes, they
started hitting the mainstream, like, two years ago; but it’s
only relatively recently that major non-tech-niche media have
really started to take notice. Within the last year, The
New York Times, and other publications, began running
strangely starry-eyed pieces extolling the engrossing little
boxes’ diverting capabilities. And then, predictably, luddite
Cassandras and Chicken Littles began decrying the End of Society
As We Know It.
In a piece titled “The World at Ear’s Length,” which ran last
month, Times writer Warren St. John likened iPod wearers
to zombies, dubbing them “iPod people.” The piece, though
playful, had an ominous tone, highlighted by quotes from a
British professor of media and culture (identified as “the
world’s leading—perhaps only—expert on the social impact of
personal stereo devices”) who warned in sci-fi solemnity of
the danger of citizens “blanking out.” The likely result of
all this iPod-induced blankness was an environment he labeled
“inhospitable.”
Even self-identified pod people have begun outing themselves
and offering up weird mea culpas. At his Web site, conservative
journalist Andrew Sullivan wrote a lengthy, and somewhat tortured,
account of his deprogramming. Here, he sums up:
“Not
so long ago, I was on a trip and I realized I left my iPod
behind. Panic. But then something else. I noticed the rhythms
of others again, the sound of the airplane, the opinions of
the cabby, the small social cues that had been obscured before.
I noticed how others related to each other. And I felt just
a little bit connected again. And a little more aware. Try
it. There’s a world out there. And it has a soundtrack all
its own.”
It does? Jeepers! Thanks for the tip. Is it as cool
as the Strokes to Plastic Bertrand to Wyclef Jean to Serge
Gainsbourogh to Os Mutantes that my own iPod offered up to
me on the way into work today?
No? Then, for God’s sake, shut up.
I mean, give us a break, Andy—and spare us the self-flagellating/self-serving
(not to mention totally insincere) lecture. If all it takes
to separate you from reality to that degree is a personal
stereo, you had a pretty fleeting relationship with it to
begin with.
See, Sullivan doesn’t for a moment believe that his iPod cut
him off from his fellow man in any way that he wasn’t already
cut off. (The fact that he’s a gay conservative, now that
maybe cut him off, but blaming his record collection, that’s
plain silly.) He’s a journalist and a cultural critic, for
cryin’ out loud. In any other context, do you think this guy
would ’fess up to being removed from his fellow man, to being
out of touch, to being insulated from “how others relate to
each other?” Of course not. Not for as long as he’s soliciting
donations from readers via a Paypal option at his Web site,
anyway.
It’s just a fatuous and convenient anti-fad pose.
Commentators, if you’re old enough to remember, made the same
dire and ridiculous warnings about Sony’s Walkman when it
hit the shelves in 1980: We were being driven inward by our
entertainments, made antisocial by our toys. (And even still,
from time to time, some doddering crank will pipe up about
the communal experience of viewing movies in a theater rather
than at home in your DVD and plasma screen, Surround Sound-equipped
living-room bunker.)
This is all nonsense. First of all, it discounts the real
possibility that the iPodder is very much engaged with art,
which some might contend is one of the more valuable fruits
of human effort. And people necessarily interact with art
in highly idiosyncratic and personal ways. Can you really
begrudge someone for choosing to engage more, and more deeply,
with [fill in a compelling audio artist here: Camille Saint-Saens,
Cole Porter, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Harry Partch, 50 Cent—whomever
most challenges and delights you] than with the cabby? Given
the limited amount of time most people have these days to
indulge in beauty—productivity-and-profit- oriented folk that
we are—that’s just efficiency, in my mind.
Furthermore, in the event the mere utterance of 50 Cent’s
name sounds like the restless pawing of the barbarians’ steeds
beyond your picket fence, keep this in mind: Your iPod can
as easily accommodate e-books (the Bible, say) or T.S. Eliot
reading The Waste Land, or “Podcasted” radio programs
running the gamut from history lessons to political commentary
to personal essays to movie reviews, as it can “Gatman and
Robbin”.
Human disconnect is not an Apple product (nor a HP, nor a
Sony) and I find it impossible to believe that we’re losing
a generation’s best thinkers to thought-deadening, socially
insulating playlists—the enjoyment of which I point out again
is human interaction.
It’s worth noting that Jackson Pollack often painted while
listening to bop jazz records; the music clearly had an informative
effect, whereas his actual social interaction was, um, less
beneficial. In a foreword, Douglas Adams, author of The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, thanked Paul Simon,
claiming that he listened to One Trick Pony over and
over during composition. And you know that if Nietzsche
had access to an iPod you’d have had to tear the buds blaring
Wagner right out of his head.
The iPod backlash is a reactionary and paranoiac strain of
McLuhanism: We shape our tools, and then they eat our brains!!:
And it’s goofy. It’s like blaming Atari, solely, for the tendency
of humans toward violence.
And, seriously, does anyone buy the “Frogger made me do it”
excuse?
—John
Rodat
jrodat@metroland.net
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