Pod People
What the Shuffle can teach media consumers about the meaning of life
BY Richard Poplak
Illustration by Raymond Biesinger
When Steve Jobs and his design team at Apple dreamt up the iPod, I wonder if they knew their innovation would be as key to 21st-century metaphysics as it is to the dissemination of digital music files. I’m guessing no. I’m sure they figured on making packets of money. But on clarifying the nature of ontology and adding a necessary twist to the understanding of elemental rationalism? That’s a lot to ask of the little doodad.
Still, that will be the iPod’s ultimate legacy, when it is finally enshrined in the Almighty’s Kingdom, along with the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita and a previously viewed copy of The Passion of the Christ DVD. I know this because I haven’t given a nanosecond’s thought to metaphysics or spirituality since high school.
All that changed when I used the “shuffle” function on my iPod.
Now I’m seriously considering donning saffron robes, shaving my entire body, anointing myself with fragrant oils and devoting my life to the understanding of meaning. This I will accomplish simply by listening to my little iPod on “shuffle” for the rest of my days.
Truth came to me this weekend, when several friends and I were listening to It (iPod) on Holy (shuffle) mode before going out. Holy mode reveals the following—an understanding of randomness that is so complete that it inspires nothing short of a life-altering epiphany. When was the last time you gave any real consideration to the concept of randomness? Well, let me tell you, random’s time has come.
The new iPod Shuffle’s tagline is, incidentally, “Life Is Random.” This is more than a huckster’s sales pitch, my friends. This is fundamental truth. We wander through life with no inkling of the essentially capricious nature of existence. We are comfortable, well-fed, smug. We are tragically ignorant of the Sword of Damocles hanging millimetres above our heavily gelled hairdos. We think nothing of the cosmic grab-bag of happenstance that defines our dust-mote of time on this planet. Life is Random. Shit Happens. Astra inclinant, non necessitant.
This is Truth.
Why does Adrienne’s iPod play Björk so often, when she owns but three Björk albums out of 200? Why is Dave’s iPod so fond of The Kinks, when my iPod contains at least twice as much Kinks material and plays it never at all? And why, Oh Tiny White Electronic Device, does my iPod play the Pixies so often, when they form less than one percent of my overall collection?
On the surface, these questions may strike you as superficial, trivial even. But does not the surface of a still lake conceal many hidden depths, further obfuscated by your face reflected in the stillness? (Sorry, I’m a little new at the vaguely Eastern, quasi-poetic rhetorical thing.) Never before had the concept of randomness been thrust upon me with such urgency. Why do iPods play music in such a manner, I asked? Why, indeed.
By devoted listening to Holy mode, I am convinced one can decode the meaning of existence. Over 20 or 30 years, patterns will reveal themselves. Fractals will emerge from the chaos, paradigms will form in your Mind’s Eye. And then Understanding. Followed by Ecstasy (the emotion, not the designer drug). Trailed by a real aversion to the Pixies (the band, not tiny little fairies).
Life is Random. Consider the implications of that statement. Steve Jobs and co. have changed my life, as well as my afterlife. And now, I will listen to It on Holy mode and try to come to some understanding.
Oh, crap! The battery’s dead.
Guess I’ll just do some hot knives and watch Floyd’s The Wall instead. Om nama shivaya, my brothers and sisters. Blessed be The Pod.
