Everything I Know I Learned From My iPod (Part I)

A good friend of mine, the Old Guy, occasionally leaves a comment on this blog.  More often than not he’ll drop me an email.  Recently he sent me a thoughtful message that I've received permission to repost.

In it, he worries that our stunning technology can do as much to pull us apart as bind us together.

Here's what he says:

A long-time friend gave me an iPod loaded with the songs of our lives.  It contains the Billboard Top 100 for each of the years 1957 through 1980.  Mostly originals, but some covers snuck in.

I am amazed at the memories these songs bring back (I'm randomly shuffling through them all together); I remember ALL of them through the late '60's, and most of them thereafter.  That's not surprising, as I was always into music until family got in the picture. 

In any event, it occurred to me how this "life soundtrack" would be shared by most folks of similar ages who had lived anywhere in the country.  No matter the race (although Afro-Americans may have been more familiar with the originals of some of the '50's stuff rather than the lily-white covers), the social economic background, or even the geography. 

The same has, of course, been noted about shared television programs, be they entertainment or news.  And magazines.  And newspapers.  And so on. 

There was something to be said about mass marketing which has been lost forever with niche marketing.  (I LIKED going for the mean rather than for the slice of a tail.)  I dare say that, thirty or forty years from now, there will not be significant memories of shared content, be it music or even news, across our population.  Shared delivery vehicles, of course ("Remember that clunky first generation iPod?  Do you have any idea how little it held?  I wish that I had saved it, as it's now worth more than you can imagine!"), but little shared cultural content. 

We are now brought together by our devices.  

You can tell that I'm reaching a certain age.  I increasingly think of weird stuff.

Thanks, Old Guy.  I share some of the same angst.   (See Binding Innovation: Sewing Machines and Social Networking.) 


Coming next: Everything I Know I Learned From My iPod (Part II).

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

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