Media Ecology (Or How My iPod Rules My Life)

While I was driving home today in my cousin's car, i realized exactly what I would write this blog post about. The description specified to pick one piece of technology and discuss it's effects. Well, the best example I can give of this is simple; my teeny-tiny blue iPod nano. And while this seems like a very trivial, even mundane, aspect of technology, I realized on the way home just how much impact it actually has on me. Ian said something in Mass Comm today that really hit home, especially when I started thinking about this specific blog post; our live are mediated every day. I can't think of any way to express this better, than by using my iPod as an example. It is hooked into my alarm clock, so it is the first thing I hear when I wake up every morning. I listen to it while getting ready, while I'm on the TTC, while I walk everywhere I go. Then I turn it off while I'm in my classes, but I manage to listen to it in between classes. Then I repeat the cycle on my way home, and to top it all off, I have developed the habit of listening to music while going to bed. It is the first and last connection to the media that I have every single day.Not only has my iPod become vital to my life (I left it at someones house once and went without it for a day, and it nearly destroyed me), but it has become an extension of myself, and transformed who I am. I have now become known as a "pod-head", characterized by the signature white headphones constantly in my ear, and the content of my iPod is something that to both friends and strangers defines who I am. Don't get me wrong, I have always had a passion for music, and have found that it has a big impact on me. But now, to other people, the kind of music that can be found on my iPod determines the kind of person that I am; Sufjan Stevens now makes me pretentious, Jurassic 5 makes me a "poser", and the Kings of Leon have made me seem "indy". Not to say that I am not all these things, I like to think that my taste in music is very ecclectic and non-judegmental in any way, but simply by looking at my music someone can make an outright judgement about me in the same way they judge the clothing I wear.I guess what this long-winded typing storm has shown me is that technology, no matter how every day it might seem, has such a huge impact on us as a culture, and as individuals.I have become a slave to my iPod, allowing it to mediate my life without any hesitation or qualms whatsoever, and for now that doesn't seem so bad. The key to that is, when will it start seeming bad, and will I notice?