The geek in me somehow managed to refrain from posting when the iPod Nano was released a number of weeks ago. Today I must break down and write about iPods. iPods have become an icon, a status symbol– it fascinates me that this fairly techy toy is now a common household name. It literally is the new Walkman.
What brings this topic on, you ask… well in Art History we’re currently studying Greece. Art History has been fascinating this semester, I’m very much enjoying learning it (though cramming for essay tests is much less pleasant). Greece is much more interesting than I ever thought. So many ideas and attitudes we see today originated in ancient Greece.
Mr Furious: I’m a Pantera’s box you do NOT want to open!
Casanova Frankenstein: It is PANDORA.
Mr. Furious: Uh, please don’t correct me. It sickens me.
For example, the idea that women are evil. I support that idea. In Greek mythology, woman was given to man not as a help-meet, but as a punishment for Prometheus stealing fire. Most of us know the rest of the story, that she opened Pandora’s jar or box and released pretty much everything bad in the world– all the diseases, sorrows, vices, and crimes that afflict humanity (mercifully the gods also placed hope in Pandora’s box to relieve the suffering caused by these ills). So the attitude in early Greece was literally that the kitchen / home was the woman’s place, she was rarely allowed out, for she couldn’t be trusted. If she were to go out she would sleep around and there would be no way for the husband to know that the children she bore were his.
Ok that was a long side note. What does that have to do with iPods, you ask? Ok I’m getting there, that was just a thought I meant to write down last week. So today we began talking about the decline of moral values in Greece. Humanism had been a focus in Greece for years– belief in and the glorifying of the greatness of mankind. They had great pride because of their amazing defeat of Persia in the Persian Wars (they were impossibly outnumbered. Sounded a lot like Helm’s Deep to me).
Their social values shifted years later when the city-states of Greece were devastated both morally and economically by civil war. They lost faith in the ideals of humanism and emphasis became to be upon the self, personal comfort, luxury, and pleasure– materialism.
The instructor related this to American history– how after a great victory, say after World War II, how society was boosted and people became very positive and idealistic; and how after a divisive war America was torn apart (he cited Vietnam as his example for that), people becoming cynical and selfish, seeking their own interests since their country had failed them. He began ranting about how this is how society is today– “Is it anything other than materialistic?! We want good jobs so we can get money so we can get stuff! Fancy houses and cars…”
As he ranted he mentioned his own kids and how “‘I have to have an iPod! And it has to be the 60 gig one that holds 10,000 songs!’ WHO THE HELL HAS 10,000 songs?!” I busted up at this point. The iPod had become the main object of materialism in his little lecture-closing rant and this is obviously something he was dealing with at home.
The iPod. A symbol of the decline of human social values, symbolic of selfishness, decadence, luxury and pleasure. Look, they even reveal their true nature by coming in black now. Isn’t Steve Jobs perfect as the devil with his army of dark angels in the Apple marketing department? I can’t deny that when that black iPod Nano came out last month I literally was tormented by it. I wanted it so bad, I had to have one. I was distracted by the hype all day at work the day it was announced / unveiled. It was seductive… so sleek, so tiny, so cool. Oh the temptation… I would say Steve Jobs is the devil only among geeks, but everyone knows what an iPod is and I know for a fact that very non-geek people are also seduced by the image to buy them. (After the hype subsided I was able to escape temptation and remain iPod Nano-free. I just told myself I couldn’t justify buying one when one with larger storage capacity would come out in 4 months or so– yes, of course there are always upgrades.. I could safely talk myself out of ever buying another mp3 player based on this philosophy of a better one being 4-6 months down the road). Regardless, it’s not uncommon to hear a discussion about iPods among the average crowd, whether it bet a debate for/against it or people small talking about how cool the latest iPod is.
Not only is the iPod a symbol of materialism and the decay of social values, but it’s breeding anti-socialism among the rising generation! Our very social fabric is at risk! Hehe… read the following letter to the editor published in the school paper last week– this had me busting up too:
Dear Editor,
Recently my little sister received an I Pod for her birthday and now I hardly get a word out of her. When she comes home from school I ask her how her day went and I get no answer. Not to long ago we drove to Salt Lake and the whole car trip not a single word was uttered. This device was very foreign to me, but then I had a huge eye opener to just how popular this I pod machine really was. I went with my singles ward on a camping trip. I don’t think I’m too far off to assume that most people go on these kinds of outings to socialize and meet new people. My experience was quite the opposite. The minute I got in the car three of the passengers put on their head phones and started jamming away to their I Pod’s. Through out the trip you could find several kids sitting by the fire shaking their heads mumbling words to the hottest Green Day tune. It was kind of a scary sight for a singles ward activity. I wondered why they even bothered to come when they could sit on their bed at home and chill to their music just as easliy. From these experiences I have concluded that our generation is headed down a path of anti socialism due to the evil I Pod. Students, save yourselves from these cursed contraptions!!! Take a break from the I Pod even if its for just a day. You might make a new friend, find a new interest, one things for sure your ear drums will get a break.
– Desiree
I think she’s just jealous that she doesn’t have her own iPod. Steve Jobs may be the devil, but I gotta hand it to him– he’s a genius. Look how visible the iPod is and how much people talk about it. People don’t know about any other mp3 player, for the most part. But they all know about iPods and buy them. Whether they really love / want to listen to music or just want to be cool / hip, the iPod now has mass appeal. Steve is playing his pipe well, I just wonder where he’s leading us. I’m sure it’s much bigger than just mp3 players…
Comments
10 responses to “The Root of All Evil”
yeah baby, gonna get the new one!
haha, you just introduced me to the new deathcab for cutie CD, and one title happened to stand out to me. This one is titled :Brothers on a Hotel Bed. hahahahahaha, i can’t help but think of the St. George trip when we went to see Episode III.
well, it’s official. i’m old. i wouldn’t pay $30 for an ipod. what the crap? where’s the appeal? the smallness of it? i thought bigger was better. so it play music. who cares. i hate music. bah.
LOL. I haven’t paid that close of attention to the songs, Shawn.
Josh: you may not give a crap but watch out for your little one. Actually, supposedly the new iPod is supposed to feature much better recording capabilities– ie stereo at 44.1 khz or whatever it is, CD-quality-ish. Would that change your interest in one?
You’re right. Women are evil. 😉
I suppose being a punishment for man doesn’t necessarily make them evil… The version of Pandora’s story I read last night just made her sound extremely curious, not necessarily evil. It’s like money.. it’s not evil in and of itself, it’s just the root of all evil 😉
So evil you could say they were E-veel? E-veel like the fru-eets of the de-veel?
Yeah. How many people have you brutally murdered?
Well, brutal’s a subjective term. What’s brutal to one person might be entirely reasonable to someone else.
great reference. haven’t seen that movie in years.
but, i don’t think there’s anything that would convince me to buy an apple anything. in my experience they’re overpriced, overmarketed devices that don’t seem very innovative. anyone could make an mp3 player with a gazillion-byte capacity, and you would pay through the nose for it. ipod seems very gimmicky to me. nothing original to it. it this “dream comes true” philosophy that have run the steve jobs ship aground more than once. i think we’ll look back and put ipod and laser discs in the same sentences.
the other thing that bothers me about it is the way the media falls all over themselves when they talk about it. in that way, ipods are alot like john kerry (another unoriginal tool). all of this points to a vast left-wing conspiracy of which i shall not be part, thank you very much!
Ehehehe… Nice.
Call me blind but I can’t see the iPod losing steam. It has far surpassed “laserdisc”– I never saw a laserdisc outside of the video store or my 6th grade classroom. iPods, with all their different flavors, are everywhere. One might say mp3 players in general are overpriced, but at this stage Apple has so much control over the components used to make them (laptop hard drives, flash memory, etc) that they are able to sell items cheaper than any of their competitors. (Reminds me of walmart a little, ick).
I do agree how it’s ridiculous that the media falls all over the iPod– for example, reviewers completely ignoring things that they’d hold against other mp3 players. But from a purely technical standpoint, there are only 2 issues I have with the iPod– if Apple fixed them I’d probably own one. 1) gapless playback (so if tracks are meant to blend seamlessly one into the other there isn’t a little break/skip in the music like there currently is on the ipod) and 2) a graphic equalizer.
I do agree much of Apple’s product is overpriced– Powermacs, etc (I ranted a year ago about how overpriced they are). Powerbooks (when they update them to Intel, anyways) are comparable to whats available in the PC market, and iPods are becoming a better value, but the rest of Apple’s product remains overpriced.
Man. Why do I care? I’m too much of a geek.