Gadget Mania

This morning as I was running my errands I found myself getting restless by the minute. I wondered why that was as the anxiety was of a distinctly different nature. It was nuanced by a kind of emergency I had yet to experience. I did a run-down of my routine and all seemed in order. All minus one thing, that is.

I had forgotten to bring my iPhone along.

If I'm walking or waiting in line somewhere I use the opportunity to read the news, email, or text and satisfy an array of multi-tasking inclinations. Gadgets like the iPhone succeed in claiming your attention because they are just that well deserving of your attention. They, more often than not, produce the right info. Not only that, they're quick and they don't waste time by producing a litany of 'uhms,' 'you knows,' and 'likes.' How many humans can we say this about, folks?

I was away from it for about ninety minutes today and I don't think I've ever hurried that much to get home. Under other circumstances, I would have checked into the nearest Betty Form clinic for the clinically addicted to iPhones and other such über-cool gadgets. Instead, I realized that I, like millions of others, have long fallen into the unavoidable lap of trickery of the iPhone. For, once a user, always a user.

And yet somehow I didn't try to rectify the problem and get all 'zen.' I suppose I know who I'm dealing with so I gladly give in. Because, after all, I do know that just when I start to think I'm out, it, the gadget, will find a way to pull me right back in.





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Travel, the iPhone, Time/Space

“Wasn’t is a great morning today?” said the Trader Joe’s cashier to me as I was picking up my combination of sparkling water and sunflower butter.

I had to think a bit before saying: ‘Yes, good, good.’ First, I had to think about where my morning had been and then I had to match my first morning experience with one of my high-frequency applications on the iPhone: the checking of the weather. As a biker, I have to be aware of the weather, after all. The weather had apparently been good in the town where said employee had woken up and the last time I was in said town, it had been raining pretty steadily. It felt like much time had transpired albeit it was but one day. The time/space duo acquires particularly peculiar meaning at times.

In a twenty-four hour period I had driven over 650 miles and passed through parts of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. When much space is covered in a short amount of time, time itself is processed a little differently.

One of the good things about this kind of travel is the help that technology affords. The iPhone is especially handy and the GPS service is most reliable. The little blue dot proves reassuring, more often than not, and whether you are in what looks like Nowhereville, USA or a major downtown area, the iPhone says, 'don’t worry, I got this.'

Of course, I’m a fan of the iPhone. I tend to use only Apple gadgets because, like my trusted people, they deliver. If something works, I believe in showering it with linguistic attention.

So, just what was accomplished in one day, which is not necessarily a prototype of quotidianity?

Well, other than covering different time zones by car and visually experiencing some of the vast landscape that is the Midwest, I met up with fellow medievalists, presented on my research at the International Congress on Medieval Studies which takes place annually in Kalamazoo, MI, spent an evening with a fellow medievalist with a knack for Apple gadgets to whom I showed which iPhone apps he'd been missing out on while simultaneously thinking of how little we were talking about the importance of medieval scholarship is higher academia, heard a few talks in my field, rediscovered the music of The Strokes on the drive back (as it played from the iPhone, of course), and much more.

Who, but medievalists can pull off such multidisciplinarity, I ask (in jest for those who might take this rhetorical question as a sign of narcissism.)

On the way back I was entertained by the day I had just experienced. Medieval scholarship and modern technology do make quite a gripping marriage indeed. I really should have read my presentation off of the iPhone but introducing too much modernity to an auditorium full of medievalists might prove to be a tad too daring. So, I used paper. This time.







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California Travel and The Business of Music

On my last visit to California I forgot to bring the iTrip with me which meant I couldn't listen to my own playlist while trying to get from place to place. I get anxious couped up in a car sans music. So, I did what I rarely do. I turned on the radio. And here I was. In California. Listening to a song I would have otherwise discovered on a Saturday at my local gym while casually looking at the TV screen.
I get lost a lot when I drive around in California but I don't get as annoyed by the time loss. The experience is almost relaxing as I get to be in the company of my own self, with no one telling me that my music is too loud or too obscure. So I roll the windows down and listen to the unpredicted choices the radio throws at me, free of my playlist control.
And in moments like that I felt I was enjoying music the way I hadn't in a long time. Music came to me as circumstance dictated and that was a novel treat.
Ergo, I found today's NY Times article on music quite gripping. So much about the music business seems to be about the business and not about the art itself and that hurts not only the genuine artists out there but also the genuine lover of music who relies on this art form in incomparable ways.
A favorite paragraph states:
"Perhaps it’s too 20th century to hope that music could stay exempt from multitasking, or that the constant insinuation of marketing into every moment of consciousness would stop when a song begins. But for the moment I’d suggest individual resistance. Put on a song with no commercial attachments. Turn it up. Close your eyes. And listen."
Read it all here.

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And the Country With the Cheapest iPod Nano Is...

Mark Your Calendars: The Android's Almost Here

Joseph and I were discussing Google's super phone, the Android, a mere couple of weeks ago and while we both expressed an interest in becoming Android-ites eventually, the release date of the super phone seemed still a thing of the future. Google's uber-phone will actually be available this month and it will be interesting to see if it will indeed crush the iPhone.
Even though I tend to favor Apple products for a good number of healthy reasons, the Android is promising to provide many of the features I care about having in a phone.

A snippet from today's Times article article says:
"Android comes with built-in programs like Contacts, Calendar, Calculator, Music, Google Maps, a YouTube module and chat and text-messaging programs. The Web browser uses the entire, glorious, 3.2-inch screen (480 by 320 pixels); unfortunately, it offers no Flash video. Worse, you have to do a lot of zooming in and out, and the onscreen + and - buttons are much fussier to use than pinching on the iPhone’s multitouch screen."
Read more here.

What do you think of it?

Gendering the iPod: Theory and the Media

As a result of Ike's aftermath, we found ourselves without power here in Columbus, OH. We are still, as a matter of fact, sans electricity. Starbucks, however, is open and all the outlets were occupied today.
Slogan of the day: 'In Starbucks We Trust'....?
So, my hat goes off to modernity this week, more specifically, electricity.
Now.
Some of you have asked questions about certain Gender Theory jargon items. Ergo, I'm posting this as an example of literary theory applications to various Pop Culture notions.
I contributed this piece a while back for public radio. As I've already intimated in previous posts, I happen to fully agree with Nietzsche's music-loving, dying Socrates in that music precedes other forms of speech/language. And this piece is premised on the power of expression that music engenders.

In this piece I gender the iPod.
Click here to hear a gendered reading of the iPod.

graphs per apple, google images

Quotation of the Day

"I'm anxious. The moment I buy an Apple product, I know a newer, better version is right around the corner. Slow down, Steve Jobs. I just ordered the Classic. Let me enjoy it for a while. Like a month or so."

Uttered by a loyal Apple user when Jobs announced the new iPod upgrade.


graph per ny times

Apple Ad Banned in the UK

Mae West-inspired jokes apparently won't quite cut it for Apple.

""Is that the whole internet in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?"

The above joke, despite being quite hilarious, will never be seen in an iPhone ad -- at least not in picky Great Britain. Why? The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has upheld a complaint about a TV spot for the iPhone which claims that "all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone". The problem is that the iPhone doesn't work with Flash or Java, which caused two viewers to write in and whine. From the ASA case page:

Two viewers believed the claim that all parts of the internet were accessible was misleading because they understood that the iPhone did not support Flash or Java, both integral to many web pages."

Is this a question of semantics or a basic cultural difference?

Read it here.
graph per apple

Best Paragraph: the iPod Shuffle

Hat tip to CB over at Monitormix for providing the best paragraph I read today. It's on the very relevant notion: the iPod shuffle.


"The drawbacks of the shuffle feature mean more work for the listener -- and iPod shuffle should be about passivity, about letting go. I suppose that's the crux of the problem for me. In the shuffle mode, I spend most of my time hitting fast forward until I find a song I feel like listening to; I can't help but try to carve out a story. I love contrast and the blending of genres, so it's not about disparity. It is, however, about intention. What iPod shuffle lacks is one of the best parts of a great mix -- album sequence, or a justification for why one song follows another."

I am so very glad to know I'm not the only one who feels some measure of anxiety thanks to this 'feature.'
I concur, I concur.

An Impotent iPhone?

As much as I like and support Apple gadgets and notions, the iPhone just ain't cutting it for me.
I remain a BlackBerry user for a number of reasons, the most important one being: they just work.
Let's hope Steve Jobs figures out a way to make the iPhone the little gadget that could....
And the best iPhone sentence I read today would have to be: "For many people on Friday, the iPhone was the iCan’t."
Read more here.
graph per ny times