SPOT THE SLIPPERY SLOPE

Why iLove modern luxury (Robert Fulford, The National Post, September 19th, 2006)

Every owner of an iPod, bebop lover or not, knows what I'm talking about. You carry a slice of plastic, about three times the size of the chocolate that some hotels leave on your pillow. Because a generation of inventors have dedicated themselves to nanotechnology, the plastic wafer contains a world of sound, some 1,000 separate items, all of which you have chosen. This object has been in my possession for only about six months, but it's already hard to remember how I managed without it.

It delivers Mozart horn concertos and a collection of Johnny Mercer songs, many Ben Webster solos and the wondrous 18th-century cello concertos of Leonardo Leo, great quantities of Ellington and Monteverdi, and hundreds of other items. Then there's the spoken-word material -- podcasts. Every week National Public Radio, that earnest network, sends me its best items free of charge, on which dedicated American liberals try to educate me. But I've only started exploring podcasts.

Like many electronic devices, the iPod divides people into two groups. Some find it outlandish and can't imagine why anyone would want it. This element frequently gives moral or even spiritual reasons. "When I'm alone I prefer to dream my own dreams," an acquaintance remarked recently, with an unmistakable air of superiority, like Plato talking to a teenager. Others listen with disdain to your naive enthusiasm. They acquired an iPod several months or even years ago -- after all, the first version appeared in October, 2001.

Every traditionalist worth the name knows how to spot the downside of a new invention, especially if it widely popular and involves an element of entertainment or fun. We are masters at taking an innocuous new technological widget and using it to paint an alarming picture of civilization in its death throes. The imagery can be near-poetic and consistency is not required. For instance, we are fully capable of attacking the cell phone as a destroyer of solitude and a means to keep us under a forced surveillance that would have alarmed the Founders while pointing to the television as the death of close-knit families sitting around together after a hard day’s labour spinning wool and telling rich tales of the ancestors. It doesn’t matter because we are so good at triggering visceral exasperation in modernists that they rarely notice. They usually just splutter something like “Tell me exactly how my Blackberry harms you!” and then flee out of concern for their blood pressure.

But what of this? How in the world can one object to a world immersed in one’s favourite music? C’mon, people, put your thinking caps on. This is important.