Eleventh Chapter … Delia Dumitrica, “You Are Your iPod!”

This chapter opens with the question, “Ever wonder what the person next to you is listening to on their iPod?” and unfortunately, the only thoughts I had were the few times I have been next to someone for a length of time who insisted on singing along with the music only he could hear. However, since I enjoy reading Foucault and about his thoughts, the rest of the article was pleasant. Our identity is always under construction, constantly changing, being acted upon by numerous forces. How do we construct our selves? Were does the self fit in reality? What level of agency do we possess and how much are we (pre)determined by external forces?

When we consider the iPod to be a technology of the self, it is suddenly much more interesting to me than a music archival system. Could an iPod actual assist a person in leading an exemplary life? If the iPod or iPhone records and identifies the self, a diary style interrogation of the soul, a sharable but presumably private expression of likes, dislikes, thoughts and motives, then the playlist of that persons life may show which culture they have bought into. Are all the songs mainstream top 40 commercially created artists or is there an independent streak of defiant, protesting the issue de jour awareness content? Is there a model self? Whose propaganda would the model self’s iPod contain?

Dumitrica states on page 136-137 “These devices talk about what we deem as important…” Personification that I appreciate; this is how some have found their voice. But the voice Dumitrica offers is very self centered: “The iPod is about me, about my experiences, my time management, my preferences. It separates me from the social world in which my body is present. It signifies a state of being to this world: I am present, but I am with myself. No intrusions, please!”

The technological tool she describes utilizes a dividing practice, much more a separator than a unifier. The discussion about separating the unfit until cured was almost chilling and the closing comments on becoming a work of art was entirely too brief to be effective. Getting joy out of showing Dad your calendar is not my standard definition of art.