“Markus Giesler, a 28-year-old assistant professor of marketing at York University in Toronto, is fast becoming a bright light in high-tech consumer research… Giesler is currently conducting a study of iPod users and their music-listening habits. He has set up the iPod Stories website to solicit tales of iPod
consumption, which he will craft into an ethnographic study called ‘iPod Therefore iAm.’ According to Giesler’s preliminary research, the iPod isn’t simply an updated Walkman. It’s an entirely new beast: a revolutionary device that transforms listeners into ‘cyborgs’ through a process he calls ‘technotranscendence,'” Leander Kahney writes for Wired News.
“Unlike the Walkman, the iPod taps into a ‘hybrid entertainment matrix,’ in which functions like random shuffle are a key construct, not just a cute marketing device. ‘iPod and user form a cybernetic unit,’ said Giesler. ‘We’re always talking about cyborgs in the context of cultural theory and sci-fi literature, but this is an excellent example that they’re out there in the marketplace…. I have seen the future, and it is called the cyborg consumer.’ The cyborg consumer, Giesler said, is one that uses several different technologies — from cell phones to Viagra — and is highly connected, technically and socially. The iPod, for example, isn’t just an MP3 player. It’s an extension of the memory: storing the soundtrack of a lifetime, as well as names, addresses, calendars and notes,” Kahney writes.
MacDailyNews Take: Yeah, what that guy said.
Full article here.
