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The Cult of iPOD

by Leander Kahney

2005

152 pages

Complementary Texts

Dylan Jones

David Burrows

Barry Truax

Keywords

Sound and Musical Design

Augmented Reality

Media Theory

 

 The Cult of iPOD is visually stunning. Through photo collages, scrapbook-style collections of visual bits and pieces, screenshots, advertisements across various media, and graphical layout techniques, and more, this book shows us iPod-mania. Kahney mimics and partakes in the overwhelming visual culture that iPods generate.

The book catalogues how the iPod influences and becomes influenced by mainstream culture. It places the phenomenon in a historical perspective relating it to Apple’s history as a company, the Napster craze of the nineties, and other cultural trajectories like fashion and club scenes. Much of the book discusses how everyday people use iPods and iPod culture in creative ways to augment their own lifestyle.

Kahney’s writing style transmits the ecstasy that accompanies the  phenomenon:

The  iPod is used to invoke euphoria. People are in love with music. The sparkling genius of the iPod is that it gives it to you in huge doses. The iPod can store an entire lifetime’s worth of music. And so it becomes the most personal of personal devices. More than a computer, a car, or a fancy pair of shoes, it’s part of your makeup, your personality. What’s on it -- the music—tells who you are. Music is deep in your heart and soul.  (Kahney 3)