I don’t like iPod’s either, but I do love carrying my music with me which is why I got a Sandisk Sansa Fuze 8GB. It’s great for when I go walking in the park around the lake or up the street. I also recently just bought a Nokia 5310 XpressMusic cellphone. It can hold up to almost 4GB of songs. I currently have 400 tunes on my phone and the mp3 player. I love having my music on the phone because then I can carry just one gadget and have my music with me and be able to call someone if I need to… or take a call.

So I’m wondering if since you wrote this post so long ago, have you changed your mind any about iPods or mp3 players in general?

When I am in public spaces or the outdoors in an urban/suburban environment, the idea of wearing sound transducers in my ears is physically abhorrent to me. As in, hairs raised on the back of the neck, spine shivery abhorrent.

The concept of wearing earbuds or headphones in a rural or wild environment is far to absurd for me to comment upon, and if you disagree with that premise, please read no further and simply dump me into your hopless nutcase file.

My ears give me ranging information, about things going on, machines moving, people present at x, y, z positions in the three dimensional space through which I’m moving. If I stuff something into my ears, or cover them with something, it’s like wearing goggles with milk carton plastic lenses.

I hear people laughing, speaking, emoting. Machines moving, speeding, slowing. Critters using their own languages. Air and plants and buildings and even litter melding their susurrus as I move through their spaces.

With ear pods or headphones I’d never hear the bicycle tire’s altered tone saying the rider had to move toward me to avoid some greater obstacle, nor the leather against brick as the creep around the corner flattens himself or herself against the wall, waiting for me to come into range, or the muffled sound from the lady who could use some help getting that grocery handcart up the stairs to her brownstone.

I don’t want to wall myself off from the world when I move through it. I want to hear it as it is. If opportunities arise for me help someone, or share some laughter, or engage in a bit of inconsequential chatter, I want to hear the cues that invite me to take part.

When I drive, sometimes I listen to the radio. Most times, not. There are thoughts enough to entertain me. Books I have read, with ideas to ponder. Songs I have heard, to tickle the archives of my musical mind. Fantasies galore in which to glory, hero to all and always with witty rejoinder to every uncomfortable remark. Not to even mention leaping tall buildings and saving the planet and getting the girl and all that.

In an environment such as Michael describes, then yes, an iPod might well be the difference between bliss and homicidal mayhem. That’s different. But, outside? In the spaces we all move through to get from Here to There? Please don’t handicap me with distortion filters!

Wild animals know that you only have to be mistaken *once* to be eaten. I realize that I may be closer to this reptile-brain imperative than is necessary or useful. Yet there is some part of that same reptile-brain awareness that cannot help but assign to those I see around me with earbud blinders willingly inserted, a special status: prey.

1) I don’t like being told when, where, and on what device I can play music I payed for. It’s also why I don’t buy music cd’s anymore. It’s much easier to copy it off an audio stream. Which is totally legal vs illegal peer-to-peer networks. Ironic no?
2) While I love technology, I hate having 50 gadgets to carry around. I have a cell phone, pager, pda, ipod, garage remote, modem, calculator, email, tv remote, and dmp all in one device. It’s called a pocket pc phone. It came out 2 years before the ipod. I don’t have restrictions on it. Any song I own, it will play. That is the power of technology at it’s best.

I hear you on the “exclusion” idea. It’s as if people think they are somehow hip if they show off they have an ipod. Puh-lease.

Apple is famous for simplicity and aesthetics and they do it well. However, the craze over a simple mp3 player is a bit maddening IMHO.

At first I tried playing music in the background on my office computer to drown it out, but that created its own problems. First, in order to drown out the tuneless whistler, I had to turn it up pretty loud–which meant I was disturbing people in the neighboring offices. Second, I don’t have a lot of room to store CDs at the office that aren’t work-related, so I had a pretty limited selection to choose from. And third, it’s a pain in the ass to have to change discs all day long–and using it for music meant that the CD drive on my computer wasn’t available for software or data storage.

So I got an iPod. And I love it. I’ve loaded most of my CD collection onto my little 20 GB, and downloaded quite a bit more. I have something like 3600 tracks on it, and still about 5 GB of free space–which means I can go for like 10 days on shuffle and never hear the same tune twice. I can hear conversations and other environmental noise (if I want to) while wearing the headphones, but I can also turn up the music loud enough to drown out distractions. I don’t have to depend on the radio for noise when I’m driving (especially problematic over long distances, when you never know what you’re going to find in the way of radio stations, much less the average DJ’s idea of what’s worth playing).

I find I’m a lot more productive at the office now that I can drown out the distractions, and I no longer have to worry about annoying my neighbors. And thank God, the tuneless whistler has gone back where he came from!