iPod

[Lightning Rod]

iPod
for release 10-13-05
Washington D.C.

It must just be me. I'm electronically challenged. I just don't get it.

I've taken college courses in electronics and I could do the math just fine and solder the little wires but as far as understanding how these gizmos actually work, I don't have a clue. Call me stupid. I can't see electrons. I've made my living being an electrician, I can wire a house, but when you start talking about the difference or relationship between a coulomb and a farad and a newton and a watt and an ampere and a tesla and a volt, its just over my head. I can manage #12 copper wire and circuit breakers but when we get into semi-conductors and microchips and transistors and capacitance, it's all magic to me.

But there are some people who understand these things very well. And I'm glad they do. It allows me to plug in my new little Mac-mini which is half the size of one volume of the Encyclopedia Brittanica and is packed with a million miles of virtual circuitry and not a millimeter of wasted space and has more storage capacity than a 40 floor office building stuffed with filing cabinets.

One of the little mercies of modern life is that you need not understand something in order to benefit from it. I can drive a Mercedes Benz without having a clue about fuel injection or hydraulic transmissions or electronic ignitions. I don't even need to speak German. I can just hop in and go. You can eat a souffle without knowing how to make a souffle. You can listen to and be moved by Miles Davis' music without the slightest knowledge of the difference between a flatted fifth and a major seventh chord or 3/4 from 7/8 time. You don't need to be schooled in the process of yeast metabolism in order to eat a slice of bread or be versed in the process of fermentation to get drunk or have knowledge of the mechanism of spermatazoa navigating the fallopian tubes in order to knock up your girlfriend. You just need to know the simple principles of in and out.

It is good that some people comprehend these arcane things though. Otherwise how could we have stem cell research and in vitro fertilization and farm bred catfish and trips to the moon and.... and... and.....The New iPod? What a marvel of electronic magic. On this little device which is no bigger than a deck of Pall Malls, you can store and play 15,000 songs or 150 hours of video or twenty-five thousand pornographic photos downloaded from the internet and waiting for your perusal during a subway commute or a visit to a public restroom. With its two and a half inch liquid video screen and headphones, this device will do almost everything but give you a sixty giga-lick head-job.

My guess is that Steve Jobs knows about as much electronics as I do. He needed Wozniak to do the nuts and bolts work on the first Apples and now he employes the best electronic engineers in the world to do this work for him. And they do it well: the iPod is an elegant little machine. But Jobs is not an engineer, he is a promoter and a visionary. He has demonstrated on more than one occasion that he can see into the future enough to develop products that we didn't even know that we wanted yet. Yes, Steve, build it and they will come. Well, we're coming all over ourselves right now.

The era of personal, portable computing and communication is upon us. Anyone who has walked down an urban street or in a mall knows how the cell phone has changed the landscape. Every third person is talking on one while they walk. Just wait until everybody has an iPod in their hand watching the latest episode of Desperate Housewives while driving on the freeway.

Will Rogers was talking about the U.S. Congress. He said, "It's like a guy with a ukulele. You don't know if he can really play the thing, or if he's just monkeying with it." The Poet's Eye sees that this is the general rule with technology. A sixteen year old kid can plug a Korean knock-off of a Stratocaster into a big enough amplifier and seventeen effects boxes and, without even knowing how to make a chord, have you believe that he is playing music.

I still don't understand this ukulele.


"The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh.
My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay."

"My girlfriend always laughs during sex - no matter what she's reading."

---Steve Jobs

[Lightning Rod]

here is the audio version

http://www.studioeight.tv/musicpost/iPod.mp3

in case you want to download it to your iPod

[K&D]

yeah who told me that quote before?

I-pods, fucking brilliant for those of us who listen to a lot of music and often loose things, dude, i lost my CCR album...aghh!

[Lightning Rod]

addendum to The Poet's Eye

One day circa 1972, I was at a band rehearsal. During the break, as we burned the sacrament, Lrod launched into one of his legendary monologues. It started with a key ring that I had. The ring was decorated with a piece of quartz crystal attached to a one inch chain. It was just a cheap trinket, something I had picked up in an occult bookstore or headshop. There were no keys on the ring, so I could slip it over my finger.

We were all sitting on the floor there when I dangled the little crystal from my palm and pointed to it and said, "Do you see this.? One day something like this will run your life." Of course they all looked at me like I was a nut, but they were used to this kind of thing from me, so they indulged me.

I went on to describe my theory that because of the refinements in digital technology and miniaturization, we should expect a day in the future when a device was created that was so compact that it would be like this crystal. And this crystal would be your telephone, your credit card, your television, your tape recorder, your camera, your house key, your car key, your check book, your record collection and your answering machine. You will be able to communicate with it by either touch or by voice. It will learn your voice and your touch and if you ever lost it, it wouldn't respond to another person's voice or touch.

Yes, they looked at me like I was nuts, This was 1972 and they still had eight track cartridge tape players in their cars. There were no personal computers then and no compact discs and no one had dreamed of an MP3.

During the same time, since my business was media and entertainment, I had occasion to be at parties and in bars with other musicians and media people and I couldn't count the times that I heard the lament from film-makers or aspiring film-makers about how expensive and cumbersome the technology and process of film-making were. It required mega-budgets. And the same thing from the musicians about how expensive studio time was and yada yada yada about how it took a semi-trailer truck to transport their equipment from gig to gig. These were all legitimate complaints, but they also were excuses.

"Oh, if I only had an eighty million dollar budget, I could produce my masterpiece...."

If I observed that one of these wannabes was just crying in his beer I would say, "Do you know that pretty soon you will be able to carry a film crew around in your shirt pocket? It will cost you next to nothing to shoot and cut and edit. At that point all you wistful geniuses with masterpieces boiling in your brains will have to put up or shut up." And they would look at me like I was crazy.

Now we have video iPods and cell phones that will take pictures and record sounds and messages. You can make a movie with a camera no bigger than a credit card.

Stay tuned for the crystals.

lr

[K&D]

but l-rod, don't you think there is some benefit in keeping the art expensive to produce, therefore the few that already can don't have to deal with competitors?

i think that the medium will stay expensive because who wants to deal with competition, i mean sure theres inexpensive VIDEO cameras, but the medium is still film, and the technology still hasn't caught up with film, and the stuff that comes close is pretty fucking expensive, and the process of making a film camera is not that complex and yet its expensive, why? because thats the current medium and they know you will have to buy it, why make things cheap if you don't have too.

i think the people who own the medium want it to stay expensive and that its going to be harder for prices to go down, not to say that you can't make a beautiful VIDEO feature, but that that is not as marketable to people...film is still the master.

i monologue as well, generally its to a friend who doesn't even take Political science classes with me, and she has to sit there and here me rant about a class she isn't even taking.