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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.'"
I think he makes a point when he says that there is some music that is personal, which you claim as your own for listening. As a listener of different genres of music, with a strong experimental streak, I prefer the option of not subjecting my room-mates to my experiments. The music we share is different from what I listen to on my own. Being not from the US (I'm Indian, as in a brown one), I really can't expect my hindi song-fan friends to share my enthusiasm for Chemical Brothers or Fatboy Slim.
This man has used computers to teach for a long time.. He used to make hypercard stacks with his students, to store key cases and biographical information of justices.
More recently, he's made oyez.org, where users can listen to oral arguments on all these Supreme Court cases that get argued over on /.!
Jerry Goldman got his picture in the NY Times holding his iPod, and he was thinking about its teaching potential way before it was the hip/ubiquitous gadget on campus.
What a great guy. Best thing is, he sends out syllabi in PDF, unlike the idiot PhDs who use Word docs, which bothers me because I'm using an ancient linux laptop.
Cultural Studies is very particular in the UK compared to the US version. Also Cultural Studies is more dominant than it's US counterpart.
As a discipline it is well respected in it's theoretical break from English Literature. I.e. we can have TV and radio and internet. "Pop culture" not just shakespeare and opera of high brow snobbery. An interesting discipline to say the least. The problem that many slashdotters might have with it is that it is not "scientific" and is overly concerned with aesthetics rather than politics.
This problem is solved, in part, but Media Studies which is in turn a break from Cultural Studies. Media Studies not only views the aesthetic and popular culture, it examines the way in which media operate as political constructs. It also doesn't deny the possibiliy of "research" and could best be described as Cultural Studies meets Sociology meets Politics. Politics is given preference over "art", because if art is political then one can't view it in the abstract right? So "media studies" isn't some weak Public Relations wannabe cop-out subject - it is the end-point of a massive evolution from English Literature to a more relevant and theoretically grounded area in which social research can be conducted, albeit with much time devoted to questions of research in and of itself (i.e. theory, qualitative and quantitative debates).
In other words Media Studies is something worth checking out in the liberal arts because it encompasses philosophy, politics, pop culture and studies of power all inside a carefully crafted approach to pragmatic research.
Notes on "philosophy" vs Media and Cultural Studies
=====================
You will find many high brow philosophy ppl looking down on cultural studies and criticising it. But the basic difference between the two that I will put here is --- philosophy assumes the operation of logic is "given" and aspires to "truth". Whereas cultural studies says there is language, but that language is inherently unstable and therefore we cannot rely on it as a 100% pure form of communication. Cultural Studies also critically reflects on what is considered "logic".
In other words in philosophy some things are "out of bounds" and in Cultural Studies and Critical Theory they are not --- who then is being more intellectually rigorous? Also there is little to no teaching of 20th century "postmodernism" in Philosophy departments, whereas in Cultural Studies we welcome all of the philosphical tradition and there are no "right" answers to these debates (as they are ongoing debates, how could there be a right answer just yet - if ever).... Again, who is being more rigorous and who is excluding things?
I guess you must have been hiding out with Saddam Hussein since you missed the big flap over the iPod batteries.
Basically it boils down to this: the iPod has a rechargable battery that lasts about a year. For some people, it lasts less, for others it lasts more. You can buy a replacement battery for between 50 and 100 dollars and either replace it yourself or have Apple do it for you.
Some people (generally these are the usual Apple bashing crowd) are crying fowl. "How can the evil Apple empire get away with abusing its foolish customers!", they say. "Everyone should buy a Dell now!"
Apple engineered the iPod this way to get the size down. Get over it.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I think so as well. That "safe" feeling often leads to what psychologists call Crowded Lonliness, i.e., to be surrounded by many people yet not interacting with them (except to divert your vision from them).
iPod's battery isn't user-serviceable if you want to keep your warranty.
Even worse, originally they wanted to charge like $250 to replace it...ie, iPod is disposable, because for $250 (in 18 months time, when the battery dies) you can get a better iPod with a new battery. See here for more. (WMA movie [sorry] + link to text info)
It's only the result of immense public pressure and a load of lawsuits that have made Apple change their stance and give us a $99 replacement service.
I have an iPod myself and it gets 2-5 hours of use a day (at work mostly) and I'm pretty worried about the battery - Aus$670 is a lot of money for us students.
Don't get me wrong, it's totally sweet to use and it has changed the way I listen to music (of course, don't trust me, I'm hardly Dr. iPod), but if I'm paying US$99 to get the battery changed in 18 months I will be mighty pissed.
~ Tim
Auto-mind-control. That is friggin' sad.
There's nothing wrong with "auto-mind-control"; in fact it may be one of the gems of evolution. We all practice self-mind-control all day long, directing our thoughts to what it most important, monitoring our progress and allocating mental resources. We also do things like drink caffeine to self-regulate our arousal and some practice meditation to affect their mental functioning. I certainly use music to either help me focus on my work when its time to do that or to help me forget it when its time for that. Thank goodness for the prefrontal cortex!
I find this completely inane. Why would people buy such an expensive device if they're only going to listen to the same 6 songs over the course of 3 months? Maybe it's a little more confusing as a musician and serious music listener. Personally I have a 40gb mp3 player, over 30 of those gigs taken up. I would go insane if my options were limited even in the slightest.
Different in a sense that people don't write about articles about Dell DJ or Panasonic CD/mp3 player and how it changes social behavior.
I punched a baby once.
He mentions that he found that people want to control their space, and not share the 'personal' music on their iPod, yet he has yet to identify the new aspect of personal music sharing known as 'iPod mugging', where you share your headphones with strangers and they share theirs with you.
This allows you an insight snippet into the strangers persona, and perhaps a serendipitous introduction to music you may otherwise never give a listen.
I hope his research isn't a hardwired fallback on his first such venture with the original WalkMan. Times and man change... If he simply changes the element of study, without being ready to change the methodology, he's ripe to miss the mark.
Well as for the one article you mentioned, people didn't do that often and certainly not with strangers before the iPod. Status symbol or not, the iPod creates a sense of comunity because it's easily recognizeable. You have instant common ground with a stranger now. I think that's what it's about. We see people all day long with headphones pluged in, but 90% of the time, you couldn't identify what device they were using or who made it. The iPod is very recognizeable and I think that changes something.
Call it eliteism or call it snobishness, but Apple products create their own community. I can sit in the lounge of the local colleges student center and sniff out AIM traffic all day and randomly send people IMs, but I don't. Yet when I see another user on a powerbook, the first thing I do is check Rendezvous to see if they're on. It's all about common ground and comunity.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I bought the iPod as a personal stereo and as a backup device, so that it would be easy and painless for me to do backups, to a device I was unlikely to forget to take with me.
...
It's a great backup device, and it's a great personal stereo.
I stopped using my iPod outside of the car when I realized that I was feeling a lot less grounded in the real world than I'd been before. I realized that I was closing myself out from interactions with other people. As a nerd, I have too few of those in any event, so I recognized the unit as a gant step backwards.
However, it's great in the car, and I can't wait until I get an iPod compatible car stereo so I don't need to wear those awful earbuds.
Oddly enough, until that time, I've actually wound up using it more as an audio source for my home stereo. It works great there too, and I don't have to bother with earbuds. I suspect that will be its primary use until I get a car stereo compatible with it.
Leaving it at home ruins it as a disaster recovery backup, though, which is a bummer
D
Hey, am I the only person that would jack into my Walkman without listening to anything, just so people wouldn't bother me?
Not adding anything here, but it is a handy dodge.
Agreed. I spent the first 2.5 years of college walking around with a bulky VAIO laptop. I == that geeky girl in the corner.
I got a powerbook over intercession, and during the last 2 months, and now I have the boy with the iPod in his pocket, the girl with an iMac in her dorm room, and everyone who just naturally gravitates to shiny objects coming over and taking a peek and saying something to me.
The fact that the iPod is so damn small also adds to the personal space effect - its physically unobtrusive Rather than clunking around with cargo pockets full of cds, batteries, and your diskman, you're just walking around with your own personal soundtrack playing in your head.
When I speak, no one believes me. When I write it down, people know it's true. (Basquiat)
UK university professor Dr. Michael Bull, apparently the 'world's leading expert on the social impact of personal stereo devices' I also wonder about Professor iPod's credentials, like where he got them, and how he got them. Is there a lot of reading on this subject? That's like saying "I'm a hippo psychologist"
If it hurts, don't do it
At my high school, iPods are all over the place.. In some cases I can look around, while standing in one place, and see as many as 4-5 of these things. Quite amazing, really.
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
The biggest thing that has affected me with the ipod is to take "ipod naps" while say in line or waiting. I don't want to listen to it all the time for saftey reasons. For instance once or twice I became so lost in thought then when I finally snapped too I was suprised that I missed an important announcement, bus, subway, or approaching car. But say I'm waiting for a plane and I know that I'm not going to miss anything for the next 10 min or so. And say I'm hungover. Then the situation calls for "God send death" by slayer. A quick 5 min "ipod nap". Then say I'm waiting for lunch break to finish (or waiting for lunch break to begin) then I might listen to another song. Whatever fits my mood at the second. I think the article misses the fact that your have 2500 songs or so at your disposal. And at any second - if nothing is going on- you can select the song that most matches your mood.
Screw my karma: someone please explain why the iPod is so revolutionary? We have a device that holds thousands of mp3s.... and? Any other reason why there's a iPod story on slashdot at least 3 times a week? Sony's MD players held hundreds of songs for years, but they almost never appeared in the news. And now they're claiming there's a "social impact" from iPods? Please.
Two easy steps:
* People like Apple, or at least want Microsoft to have competition. Macs were big in journalism and publishing for a long time, and I suspect that there are a lot of Mac folks in the press with fond memories. So Apple tends to get a favorable slant.
* Apple hasn't done a whole lot of good, successful stuff in the last few years except for the iPod. (OS X is in there as well, but it has a limited market, since you have to commit to going Mac if you use it.)
Put the two together...and the iPod gets lots of good press. It's an expensive device that you can carry around and show off to your friends. Not a lot of products like that, and easy for that sort of thing to have a certain "I want one" element.
May we never see th
ill definitely say that they start out on the wrong foot with me anytime someone is a self-proclaimed expert. however, did anybody do any research back int 1979? you said you saw some cultural trends, but maybe this guy is the first to actually study it at any length. im not saying its not all crap, but do you know of anybody else that has done any amount of actual research on the matter?
use your turn signal! you people act like it's divulging information to the enemy
The normal day-to-day facts of life family and home act as obstacles to the items you list above. Once out of college and into "the real world," we have to be much more choosy about the venues we visit and when we find the time to visit.
I have 30% of my CD collection on my iPod, adding more each day, am finally converting my vinyl and cassette to CD and mp3, and I like having said collection at my fingertips when I am doing what has to be done, thankyouverymuch.
Perhaps the huge music fan picked up an instrument and found he/she had no talent.
Basically, your correction is incorrect.
rule of thumb: you should pay about the same for your stereo
system as you pay your whole music collection.
example: say you've the kind of person who's only bought 10 CDs.
at ~CDN$15/each, that's about $150 - so you shouldn't buy a stereo
worth more than about $150 - a cheap gheto blaster will do you fine.
on the other hand -- say you're the kind of person who's really
into music, and you've bought yourself about 300 - 400 CDs - at the
same rate, that's about $4500 - so you shouldn't feel bad about going
out and getting yourself the high-end LINN stereo system to listen to
them on, since you're probably also the kind of person who's going
to appreciate that kind of system.
if you're in the middle -- say you've got a modest collection of about
30-50 CDs - at ~$15/each -- well then the cost of an ipod would about
match that, and you'd be in the right range to be buying such a device.
the cost of the player shoud roughly equal the cost of your collection.
regards,
johnrpenner.
Not true: it's smaller than any other HD player for it's capacity. The Rio Nitrus is smaller and nearly 1/4th the weight of the lightest iPod, but it only has a 1.5gig hard drive compared to iPod's 10+ gig.
"Compared to other HD based players? Christ have you seen those ugly fuckers?"
I have never understood why the appearance is so important: my hd based mp3 player (which shall remain anonymous) never leaves my pocket, so why do I care what it looks like? It's not a laptop or PDA that people will actually see, if the mp3 player is doing it's job properly you'll fiddle with it very rarely, so why is beauty so important if it only sees the inside of your pocket?
You: "wow look at that it's soooo purdy!" snatches iPod and shoves in pocket, never to see the light of day again
Me: "damn that's ugly!" snatches iPod-wannabe and shoves in pocket, never to see the light of day again, next to $$$$ saved
my karma will be here long after I'm gone