The IPod Syndrome
I just came across an article about the cottage industry which has sprung up
to repair broken IPods. The IPod is a marvel of engineering, but apparently
is very fragile. But, did you ever notice that modern consumer products
are a perfect example of the inverse relationship between technology and
triviality?
The Apple IPod may be a marvel of engineering, but what it does is to
serve up a completely canned and trivial application - playing recorded music -
especially when you consider the complete banality of most of the music
played on the device. The device makes it easy for users to "consume music",
but at the expense of creativity. What you see is what you get - or should I
say what you paid for.
At least in the old days of surfing radio stations for "tunes", even if by
accident you were at least marginally exposed to different music as you paused
to listen for a minute as you swept past different stations. And every so often
you found something that absolutely intrigued you and lead you on the path of
new discovery.
Not that I am arguing against IPods, I think they are neat. But if you take
the time to examine side by side the any kind of product, one designed for
purely consumer use, and the other for serious/professional use, in most cases
the professional version has a lot less automatic controls, and requires a lot
more manual input. The professional version requires the serious user to
pre-visualize the end result and allows him or her to put more of
their personal touch into the work to achieve the visualization.
There-in lies creativity.
Now everything is getting more and more packaged. From vacations to meals to
IPods and music, our society seems to be bent on creating a comfortable
cocoon around us, and a kind of "stay in-the-box" world mentality. We are
lulled into a fixed way of thinking. The problem is what happens when your
IPod breaks?
I believe as practicing engineers and designers we have the responsibility of
not just creating this new technology, but also conveying to the next
generation the real fun is learning how to hack the "IPods of life", not
just be content as a regimented user.
After all, a hirsute Steve Jobs holding up
the first Apple computer with the promise of all the things we could program
it to do with a little creativity (and a lot of hard work) was a lot more
inspirational a generation ago, than the dapper corporate Steve Jobs displaying
an IPod to a gaggle of stock analysts.
Where did you go Steve? You were once one of us... we miss you.
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