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Professor iPod Discusses Device's Social Impact
PurdueGraphicsMan writes "There's an interesting story over at Wired News, involving an interview with UK university professor Dr. Michael Bull, apparently the 'world's leading expert on the social impact of personal stereo devices,' according to The New York Times. The piece also mentions: 'Bull, a lecturer in media and culture at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, is the author of 'Sounding out the City: Personal Stereos and the Management of Everyday Life', a book Bull calls the 'definitive treatment' of the impact of the Sony Walkman and its descendants.'"
What DRM on the ipod? As far as I've seen, the DRM is in iTunes, and only applies to music downloaded from the iTunes store. I've had no problem copying self-encoded music files from my machine at home, to my iPod, to my machine at work (all windows). The only hard part was finding the music on the iPod, but since I have "show hidden files/folders" enabled in Windows, it was pretty easy. The filenames are a little strange on the iPod, but if you tell iTunes to file your music away for you, it will happily rename the files and place them in appropriately-named folders.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
User servicable in what sense?
Inside of warranty, you can send it back to Apple and have it replaced for free. Outside of warranty, you can have it replaced by Apple for $99 or you could do it yourself with a bit of technical know-how for less than half that price.
They're by no means meant to be "disposable".
They are user-serviceable, but I am fairly sure that it voids your warranty, which is crap.
If it's still under warranty, you should get the battery replaced for free under the warranty, and save yourself the $50 it costs for a new battery. If the warranty has expired, then it's a non-issue.
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Not really..
home > people > departmental faculty > Dr Michael Bull
Dr Michael Bull
Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies
Location: ESSEX HOUSE 209
Email: M.Bull@sussex.ac.uk
Telephone Numbers
Internal: 8788 or 2574
UK: 01273 678788 or
01273 872574
International: +44 1273 678788 or
+44 1273 872574
BSc (Bristol), MA (Greenwich), PhD (Goldsmiths)
Research Interests
Mobile comminication technologies and their use, Music and sound in urban culture. New directions in Critical Theory (The Frankfurt School).
Selected Publications
Books
2000 Sounding Out the City: Personal Stereos and the Management of Everyday Life. Oxford. Berg.
2003 The Auditory Culture Reader (edited with Les. Back,). Oxford. Berg
Journal Articles
2001 The World According to Sound: Investigating the World of Walkman Users. New Media and Society. Sage London.
2002 The Seduction of Sound in Consumer Culture in Journal of Consumer Culture
2003 "Towards an Aural Epistemology of Proximity and Distance. Mobile Technologies and their Use" in Space and Society (forthcoming)
2003 "Alone Together: The Culture of Mobile Listening in Automobiles" in Social Studies of Science. (forthcoming)
Chapters in Books
2001 "Space, Place and Music: A Critical Ethnography of Automobile Habitation" in Car Cultures. (ed D. Miller) Berg. Cambridge.
"Personal Stereo Use and the Aural Reconfiguration of Representational Space" in New Technologies and Spatial Practices (ed S. Munt) Cassell. London.
2003 "To Each Their Own Bubble: Mobile Spaces of Sound in the City" in Place, Space and Culture in a Media Age (ed N. Couldry and A. McCarthy) Sage, London. (forthcoming)
2003 "Thinking about Sound, Proximity and Distance in Western Experience. The Case of Odyssius's Walkman" in New directions in the Anthropology of Sound ( ed V.Erlmann.) Oxford. Berg. (forthcoming)
Translations
2003 Sounding Out the City is published in Japanese by Hituzi Sybo, Tokyo.
Book reviews
Theodor W, Adorno, Metaphysics: Concept and Problems, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000 Sociology 2002, David Morley, Home Territories: Media, mobility and Identity, London, Routledge, 2000. New Media and Society. 2002
Recent Conference Papers and International Workshops
March 2002 Rethinking Networks: Fluid Networks, Fluid People. Helsinki, Finland.
Towards an Aural Epistemology of Proximity and Distance: Mobile Technologies and their Use.
April 2002 "Hearing Culture": New Directions in the Anthropology of Sound. Oaxaca, Mexico.
Thinking about Sound, Proximity and Distance in Western Experience. The Case of Odyssius's Walkman
April 2002 "Musica Urbana" University of Bologna.
The Aural Privatising of Urban Space and its Social Implications.
November 2002 Sound Matters. New Technology in Music. University of Maastricht
The Culture of Mobile Listening: From Walkmans to the Automobile as an Acoustic Theatre.
Teaching
Michael teaches undergraduate courses in: Music and Media, Media, Technology and Everyday Life, The Media in the Era off Globalisation.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Yes, quite easily.
1. Put the album into your computer.
2. Select all of the tracks.
3. Go to the advanced menu.
4. Select "Join CD Tracks."
5. Rip and transfer to iPod.
This is, for example, how I am able to listen to King Crimson's "Lizard" in it's proper form on my iPod.
Okay, here's the list of benefits for an iPod (correct me on what I miss):
- Lots of music in one place, at your fingertips
- "Mix" on the fly
- Use it as a portable hard disk
- Some PDA functionality
- Good battery life
- Not much skipping
- Fast file transfer on a new PC
- Files can be transferred on anything with USB or Firewire
- iTunes compatible
And the list of non-plusses:
- If charged daily, $99 yearly battery replacement fee
- Battery replacement takes longer than one day.
- Storace space cannot be increased through standard methods.
- When the battery goes flat, you have to charge it.
- Also, when the battery is flat, the units data contents are not-transferrable
- Cannot use iPod's music (or data) with anything that doesn't have a USB or Firewire port.
- High initial MSRP cost.
- Cannot play music bought at record store without intermediate steps
- Cannot play your friend's CDs without intermediate steps
- Data format not car stereo compatible
Benefits of a CD/MP3 player:
- Low initial MSRP cost.
- Infinite storage space
- Can mix data and music
- Can reload with fresh batteries if ones in unit die
- Fresh batteries are available anywhere, anytime and take under 10 seconds to replace
- Choice of rechargeable or non-rechargeable batteries
- Files can be transferred to anything with a CD player
- Fast file transfer with any age of computer
- Does not require batteries to transfer data
- Can play back music on many DVD players
- iTunes compatible (if using recoded CD)
- Can play music bought at record store instantly
- Can play your Friend's CDs instantly
- Data format car stereo compatible
Lowlights of a CD/MP3 player:
- Cannot remix between discs
- Requires charging more often when using rechargeable batteries
- Bulky
- Not compatible with anything lacking a DVD or CD-ROM.
- Lacks PDA capabilities
- Older units had skipping problems
- Slow seek times
As you can see, there's strong points on both sides of the debate. As you can imagine, being a car stereo owner, I have a CD/MP3 player.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC