iPod usage

• Men are more likely to have iPods/MP3 players than women. Some 14% of men have the players, compared to 9% of women.
• 
  Almost one in five (19%) of those under age 30 have iPods/MP3 players. Fully 14% of those ages 30-39 have them; and 14% of younger Baby Boomers (ages 40-48) have them.
• 
  iPods/MP3 players are gadgets for the upscale. Fully a quarter (24%) of those who live in households earning more than $75,000 have them; 10% of those living in households earning $30,000 to $75,000 have them and 6% of those living in households earning less than $30,000 have them.
• 
  Those who use the internet are four times as likely as non-internet users to have iPods/MP3 players, probably because internet users can get much of the music they enjoy online. Fully 15% of internet users have iPods/MP3 players, compared to 4% of non-internet users. And the more advanced the internet user, the more likely it is that he has an iPod/MP3 player. Those with six years or more of internet experience are twice as likely to have them as those who are relative internet newbies (those with less than three years experience).
• 
  Broadband access is strongly associated with ownership of iPods/MP3 players. Some 23% of those with broadband at home have iPods/MP3 players, compared to 9% of those who have dialup connections. And those who have broadband access at home and at work, are the most likely of all to have iPods/MP3 players. Almost a third (31%) of those with broadband all around them have iPods/MP3 players.
• 
  16% of parents living with children under 18 in their home have iPods/MP3 players, compared to 9% of those who don’t have children living at home.
• http://irish.typepad.com/classroom/2005/02/ipod_usage.html

which cool:

COOL or COOL?

Fight the iPod craze! AAAAAAAARRRRRGGHHHH! ‘course if someone just handed one to me, I’d take it
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=405910

U.S President George Bush a confirmed Apple iPod user
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/us_president_george_bush_a_confirmed_apple_ipod_user/ http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch/0,39024667,39129474,00.htm

IPod induces allucinations?
http://gaggio.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/07/28/ipod-induces-allucinations.html

FridayFun - iPod DJ Party
http://bloombergmarketing.blogs.com/bloomberg_marketing/2005/02/fridayfun_ipod_.html

Dr. Michael Bull on the iPod-as-Icon
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/34703.html

Why do I like my iPod? Because it's just … cool.
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/04/22_pov.shtml

N.Y. blames iPods for subway crime surge
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7665344/

The iPod, more than just a music player.
http://www.ericwebster.net/mt/archives/000216.php#more

Kevin Rollins (Dell CEO) Disses the iPod
http://digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000360028158/

IPod Holds Genome
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,56223,00.html

ear trouble for iPod fanatics
http://news.scotsman.com/health.cfm?id=495772005

iPod 'threatens marriages'
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=7760

I Came, I Saw, iPod - What's Next?
http://www.musictank.co.uk/events_ipod.htm

Students get iPods as study aids
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2988325.stm

Talmudic iPod
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/04/19/talmudic_ipod.html

bibliography

Borsook, Paulina. Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech. New York: PublicAffairs, 2000.

Brooks, David. Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001.

Du Gay, Paul, Stuart Hall et al. Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. London: Sage Publications, 1997.

Du Gay, Paul. Production of Culture/Cultures of Production. London: Sage Publications, 1997.

Hall, Stuart and Paul du Gay. Questions of Cultural Identity. London: Sage Publications, 1996.

Jani, Vidyut. “iPod: Representational Design, as if people mattered”. Reasearch Paper, Arizona State University, 2004.

Hanada, Tatsuro. “Kugai: The Lost Public Sphere in Japanese History”. Toward A Political Economy of Culture: Capitalism and Communication in the Twenty-First Century. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004.

Loos, Adolf. Spoken into the Void: Collected Essays 1897-1900. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982.

Norman, Donald A. The Psychology of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books, 1988.

Phillips. New Nomads: An exploration of wearable electronics by Phillips. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2000.

Reed, Vernon. "Cybernetic Jewelry—Wearable Microsystems: From Hardware in 3-Space to Software-in-Time." Mondo 2000. 3 (1991): 83.

“The Road Ahead: Technology and Us”. TIME Magazine, 16 October 2005.

i[me.you.us/them]Pod: the phenomenon of podbodies

these images relay some of the ideas relating to my research into the Apple iPod, through its:

[1] function as an icon or symbol in our public sphere as illusions of personal identity. the iPod "eye/i" interface [it's wheel-button], distinguished white headphone wires and it's constant upgrade-ability makes the iPod the symbol of cool, across age groups, gender and cultures [all within an affluent-enough socio-economic class]

podbodies are a result: we may all look alike but it is what is inside that counts. what's in my iPod_what's in my head. normally what is in your head, no one should be able to take from you, but unplug it and our iconIdentiy is lost

[2] heightened sense of connoisseur-ship of music. it makes the average listener a music buff and it feeds an addiction that may or may not have already been in place.

[3] alteration of social interactions. it changes what is public and private, it reverses a traditional 'broad' cast to a narrowcast--music directly in ear-- and it transfers a 'narrow' cast to a broadcast--anyone can podcast any audio or visual work. we dance alone in view of others, we tap our feet to our rythm, we create personal space among the public space, we disregard public etiquette.

[top] apple store, nyc, 2005

[bottom] fast ferry, rochester, 2005

[top] shoe musuem, toronto, 2005

[bottom] lake ontario, toronto, 2005

city street, toronto, 2005

images by ilana swerdlin

-taking the form of a pod cast in 3 installments/issues/casts

-break down of topic thus far:
1] obsession with music as culture
digital music: how hard/long/detailed it used to be versus today's garage band [Faubion Bowers, Daniel Kunin "The Electronics of Music" in Aspen]

2] social symbol/icon
standardization: involves interchangeability; psuedo-individualism [p.111 Bernard Gendron "Theodor Adorno meets the Cadillacs" in Du Guy]
standarization to simplify; everyone learns the system [p.202 Donald Norman "Psychology of Everyday Things"]

3] social changes
-bizarre interactions among relationships [teachers to students, husbands/boyfriends to wives/girlfriends, strangers to strangers [google-researched websites.] how to include this in the podcast??

OTHER
cladding: "we must work in such a way that a confusion of the material clad with its cladding is impossible" [p. 67 Adolf Loos. Collected Essays] reasons for cladding are numerous according to Loos--protection from weather, hygenic reasons or for a specific effect. "man is covered with skin, the tree with bark"

diegesis
\Di`e*ge"sis\, n. [NL., fr. Gr. ?, fr. ? to narrate; dia` through + ? to lead.] A narrative or history; a recital or relation.

récit
(a) account; story; narrative genre, theatrical monologue; (Music) solo; faire le ~ de to give an account of

histoire
(a) story; (Infml) business, carry-on; (Infml) des ~s trouble; ~ de fous shaggy-dog story; ~ marseillaise tall story, fisherman's tale; ~s de revenant ghost stories; raconter des ~s à qn to pull sb's leg(b) l'~ history; pour la petite ~ just for the record

notes/ideas final essy

ideas for final imagetext essay:

my mind is bloggled [yes, bloggled] by all of these thoughts and ideas swarming around in my brain

the shoe museum in toronto, that i visited in september, really effected me. not only was it of interest to me because of my fascination with shoes and love of them, but after i left i realized 1] i was not alone in this crazy interest 2] just how much footwear says about a culture/timeperiod. and it spurred me to write this frantically on a napkin as soon as i possibly could:

"shoes clothing matching art/architecture--as history is written. what is said of our 'political' scene currently and our fashions? who writes this history?"

in fact, who says, "oh they wore these certain buckles on their shoes because it represented the king of the time who loved gold and it matched the belts that were in fashion"....after reading parts of HIDING by Mark Taylor who, although he wrote in 1997, talked about the descontruction [influence by Derrida] that is apparant in our clothing fashions of today...the ripped up jeans, the messy hemlines, the unbuttons, disheveled looks....

what about our shoes? in 100 years will the Chuck Taylor still be a symbol of 'rebellion' that it was? it's mainstream now--it comes in pink, american flags and patent leather. Will the Doc Marten still be a punk, harder-core-than-the-Converse rebellion. it's mainstream now too-- and who even cares?

http://www.adbusters.org/metas/corpo/blackspotsneaker/

15 SEPT class

"the destructiveness of war furnishes proof that society has not been mature enough to incorporate technology as its organ, that technology has not been sufficiently developed to cope with elemental foreces of society" -w.b.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.06/battlefield.html

war with technology: define. [using technology to fight a war, or battling with technology itself]

media culture class

media culture class began last week. i cannot hide that i only started this blog today-no way to change the date.