iPod... iCon

Dant, Tim (2008) iPod... iCon. Studi Culturali, 5 (3). pp. 355-374. ISSN 1824-369X

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Abstract

The iPod became, for a moment at least, iconic amongst those hand-held electronic devices with buttons and screens, noises and "connectivity" that proliferated at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This essay explores how the iPod, in becoming an unobtrusive memory machine as absent as an internal organ on the body of its user, provides a personal and separate experience that appears to express individual identity. But the organic form of the object as a personal store of culture obscures its role as a brand that ties its user into networks of connectivity. The iPod operates as a node in a network that co-opts the user into the circuits of a soft capitalism through an instrumental rationality that organises musical and other memories according to a modern bureaucratic computerised system.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Studi Culturali
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/researchoutput/libraryofcongress/hm
Subjects:
?? ipodmusiciconbody"soft capitalism"hm sociology ??
ID Code:
26891
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
11 Aug 2009 10:49
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
27 Nov 2023 00:07