Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Is he anything like Dr. Pepper? If so, I want to see his credentials.
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
Even Mr. T thinks you should buy one! And with advertisements like this one, all the fans of Dude, Wheres My Car will want one. Those two should take care of most of the US population, I'm sure.
True story.
Half the people I've talked to so far download music illegally.
He must be new at this.
why yes... it causes the user to turn entirely black with white headphones showing.
The original generic sig.
Back in the 80s, I wanted to buy a Walkman, but I couldn't find one with OGG on it. Stupid closed-source fascists!
Dr. Bull's work reminds me of Sweden's social engineering efforts. How we use something, how far do we go to utilize the device(s), etc.
Dr. Bull says, "It gives people totally private worlds." While that may be true, it also removes people from social interaction, which is vital for mental health.
It's blue and it plays music real good. I walk around with it and listen to music. It's pretty.
Thank God there are scientists researching this shocking phenomenon.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"There's a lot of studies in the literature that demonstrate with the urban space, the more it's inhabited, the safer you feel. You feel safe if you can feel people there, but you don't want to interact with them."
When I use my iPod in public, I often realize that by avoiding that interaction, I may feel more 'safe' but I am also missing out. Usually I take my iPod headphones out when I'm in a situation where I could interact with people. I like my music, but I think the sense of security is very false.
Whether it's intuition or hard research, more often than not Apple gets it right. The other computer companies usually go for "good enough" and as cheap as they can make it, and that got them market share but not that much loyalty. Now that the computer companies are being forced by reduced margins into the consumer electronic space, they are going to be faced with a different mindset. People who buy electronic widgets do not say, "Hey, who cares if it's a beige box, I don't care what it looks like, I just want cheap!" Instead people want stereos and televisions and DVD players that have quality features and look good with the rest of their stuff. Low price works to some degree here, but high-end does quite well too.
Apple has been there all along. There's a reason Apple users tend to be loyal despite the occasional hiccups from Apple and historically higher margins: They get it right. And boy does that matter in the consumer electronic marketplace. For proof of that, just walk around any large city and count the iPods. They got it right.
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
'world's leading expert on the social impact of personal stereo devices,'
Wow... I'll bet that one was a highly-contendted for title....
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".
Social interaction is vital, but it's not all mentally healthy. I used to be a regular bus commuter, and I was forced to interact with all kinds of people on the bus and at the bus stop, many of whom were unpleasant to be forced into close proximity.
A good Walkman was *vital* for my mental health.
And when I was in college walking to/from class or wherever, a good walkman made the walk more enjoyable. It's not like I was going to have a social interaction with 99.9999% of the strangers I walked past in the first place.
Why are people suddenly questioning Professor iPod's, uh, I mean Dr Bull's credentials? I'm telling you, that guy is so misunderstood.
Just let go of your suspicion and paranoia and put your trust in someone for a change. What's the worst that can happen?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
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.
Under normal use, the battery has no problems. Under heavy usage situations, battery life can decline (as is also the case with most phones, PDAs, laptops, and anything else with a non-replacable lithium battery). Apple offers a battery-replacement service for $99, or you can do it yourself for half the price. Battery replacement is also covered by AppleCare. I fail to see where this is an issue,unless you think that Apple should wave a magic wand and create a perfect battery, or that iPods should be enlarged to make rare battery replacements more convenient.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
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?
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.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I'd check out his seminal 8-Track: A New Social Order before jumping to conclusions.
As far as "social isolation" goes, the iPod is not really any different than any other personal stereo device made in the past 20 years. Long before I had an iPod, I had a personal cassette player, a personal radio, a personal CD player, and yes, even a Rio 500. The iPod is better in the sense that it stores my entire CD collection. That fact sells iPods, but doesn't change the social relationship of the device.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Please enlighten me, what's so different between an iPod and Discman, MD player or a shitty RCA mp3 player from RadioShak ? We get all those articles about how iPod changes social relationships and such. Take the article about some people plugging their headphones into other people's iPods. What is so different about iPod that it deserves that much attention and an article ? I am sure many people did that before iPod, in the era of MD player and Discman. Now this article. What is the point here ? That iPod is somehow special and turns people into musicheads ? How is that different than me listening to $10 AM/FM radio on the bus ? Bullshit I say.
I punched a baby once.
Bull: Right. In terms of usage, Apple got it intuitively right. People use (the iPod) as an alarm clock, and when they listen to it at night, they like the fact it can turn itself off...
My God, those Apple engineers are geniuses!
Let's see, I don't have an iPod, but my portable MD player can turn itself off. My $30 cassette player can turn itself off. The Sony radio-cassette player we had in our house thirty years ago could turn itself off.
In fact, that old Sony could even turn the radio off. With a tape playing, you could turn the radio on (which would override the sound from the tape), and when it got to the end of the tape, both the tape and the radio would shut off.
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!
it's not so often i come across people singing in the pubs anymore. old fellows, sure, but it's not so wide spread. Playing instruments, reading, even real conversations are being sweapt aside for game boy, iPod, and mobile phones.
It used to be only doctors had pagers and cellphones. now every schmuck in the world has them and they use them all the time with total disregard for those around them.
screw reading the newspaper on my morning metro ride! I'm going to lsiten to my iPod and chat on AIM via my mobile phone!!
and people wonder why the younger generation gets stupider and stupider. It may have a lot to do with hippie pot smoking parents, but i think the widespread use of mind numbing electionic devices is more responsible.
they do make excellent substitutes for actually raising your kids though.
I cant stand the country music stations of today for the same reason. They play a 20 song playlist over and over for sometimes 4 or 5 years. Only if a song breaks big or the star is big enough to have a payola racket going do they break that list.
I'm like you - when I listen to music, I do it all the way.
And according to Penny Arcade, you don't have to worry about yours skipping, either.
Fellowship 9/11
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"
Good for you! However, I've got 4000 CD quality songs on my 4.1 x 2.4 x .62" iPod with tracking of my favorite songs, play counts, custom playlists without re-burning CDs. It works WAY better for my needs than your CD MP3 player, so $400 is not too much for all those functions. If you want to bring all your contacts with you and transfer files between sites using firewire or USB 2.0, there's even more reason.
It's always a favorite thing of anti-iPod folks to say that it's only a "personal radio", but you sound like my Dad bitching at me when I was 15 for liking that "new-fangled acid rock". A bit outta touch....
Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead.
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.
This guy's got hit the nail right on the head. Mind you, i've seen a couple people with them, most of the time, this is based on assumptions, just because I see the white headphones. I also know 2 people who own them. However, I see at least 1/3 of people in the 16-30 age bracket with some form of personal music device. 80% of them are CD players. And nobody goes on and raves about the social impacts of these things.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I don't mean to boast but I believe that I am one of only two researchers in this field. The other refuses to publish fearing that it may start more discussion of societal impact since the result of such discussions is mostly negative, at least according to his latest findings.
After three years of detailed questionaires and the use of various statistical models I have found that most people that discuss impacts of things on society fall into 4 categories.
Those that think the impact is negative, those that think the impact is positive, those that really don't think there was and impact at all, and finally by far the largest group is those that don't even know what you are talking about.
I have yet to find find any exceptions to this rule. Take any set of data points, the comments posted to this article for instance, and you will quickly see that each comment easily falls into one of the 4 categories.
Would anyone like to discuss the impact this research might have on their decision to make future posts to
http://www.palmone.com
ok....so he's been at it for three years, going on four now.
The point the first poster was trying to make is be wary of folks that are called "experts" on topics like this.
Academia has a strange way of annoiting people with "expert" titles for things. You'd be shocked how many of these so called "experts" are bluffing their way through. I'm not saying their ALL like that, but seriously, there are a lot. I mean really, look at the guy they refer to. He's been at it for THREE YEARS. There are other people that have been at this for much longer, who are likely more worthy of the title "expert".
Those of you with jobs at universities will know what I'm talking about.
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.
Me, I'm not going anywhere without my portable gramophone.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
When I was attending Affluent-White-Kids-In-A-Western-Industrialised-Na tion high school as a youngster it was all about the Walkman. If you were cool you had one and you swapped mix tapes at lunch time and hid behind the bike sheds smoking cigarettes and all that sort of crap. I didn't have one. Now I work with computers. I forget what my point was.
Now wash your hands.
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