Read This: How the iPod Has Changed Our Cultural Fabric

The danger now is different. The man no longer needs a monopoly on musical taste. He just wants a few cents on the dollar of every song you download, he doesn't care what that song says. Other times he doesn't even care if you pay that dollar, as long as you listen to your stolen music on his portable MP3 player, store it on his Apple computer, send it to your friends through his Verizon network. To paraphrase Yeltsin's famous offer to the Chechens, take as much free music as you can stomach. We'll see where it gets you.

n+1's Nikal Saval undertakes a thorough and disheartening examination of digital music, the iPod and the pluralistic state of taste, drawing on sociological and cultural texts from Pierre Bourdieu and Theodor Adorno. In it, he contends that the personalized experience of the iPod is isolating, consumerist and deafening. When sound is everywhere, the most valuable cultural commodity is silence.

Image from lbphotovn

Read This: How the iPod Has Changed Our Cultural Fabric originally appeared on Switched on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 15:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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