This week’s post to my Technology and Society class was written in the space of a half hour in order to meet the midnight posting deadline. As a result it is even more brash and poorly written than my first pile of flamebait.
“All the tchotchkes of the world – the coffee mugs, the bracelets, the nose rings – would serve double duty as keys to content like music” The idea behind using physical tokens as keys to listen to music would supposedly be to bring romanticism back into the music industry. Unfortunately, I do not agree with this view.
Maybe I am the only one in this class young enough to remember playing around with ‘HitClips.’ This toy was based on the exact same premise as Mr. Lanier’s vision. Basically, they were little handheld devices that you got little cards for, and when you put a little card in, it would play the latest big pop hit or whatever. They were extremely awesome; you were basically the coolest kid in the school if you had one of these. The problem was, your HitClip set would almost overnight turn into something not unlike this:
HitClip Rats Nest
The only difference between HitClips and Mr. Lanier’s vision is that Songles would have tangiable, non-fiat value since they would be incorporated into household items. Imagine you really like Snoop Dog, so you go out to the grocery store to buy one of his songs. Snoop Dog’s music is in the form of dog-collars. You buy it, plug it in to your Songle player and enjoy your new music. Except, there’s just one problem:
You don’t own a dog.
You will eventually end up with a few dozen different Snoop-Dog-Collars among countless other cumbersome accessories you have no use for and own solely for the purpose of listening to music.Such a form of music distribution would grow very old very fast.
I hope I have not come off as if I am unquestioningly and blindly against every sentence in this book. There are many interesting points he makes and I look forward to seeing what else he has to give. Just like Mr. Lanier, I believe drastic changes are necessary in media propagation to allow artists to unleash their full creativity. Maye not these changes, though.
The best reason I can think of that Mr. Lanier would leave this section in his book is as an excuse to use the word ‘tchotchkes.’
have a unique inverse.
I’ve used this bag heavily for over a year and a half and it doesn’t feel like it’s going to break any time soon. The bag weighs in at around two and a half pounds.
. The sleeve is quite protective but carries little more than the laptop and a few papers. The laptop inside it’s sleeve plus a charging brick combined weigh around 4 pounds.
. There is much debate as to whether these have the same aural quality as the highly acclaimed 
According to MeElectronics, both models are built with the exact same sound drivers but their frames give them different sound signatures. I have owned both and in my experience, the M6s might sound clearer if you deliberately listen for differences but in all practical situations their sound quality is identical. Aside sound quality, the M9s are simpler to put on and built better. The M9s are built out of a single aluminum canister and won’t split in two as my old M6s did. The only real quip I have about my M9s is that I got the microphone version which is harder to wrap. Ultimately I would only buy the M6s if I knew no one would ever use them but me. The weight of either is negligible.
because it was more functional and portable. I put RockBox on it and now it does more than I could ever hope to use it for. A 
with a color screen is out but the only benefit I see from it is that you will be able to view album art and videos through a nasty little color screen instead of a nasty little black/white one. Its weight is negligible.
pens. Their ink is very dark but it tends to leak through pages and comes out almost constantly with respect to time. This allows you to draw consistent, unbroken lines but if the pen is held on a point for very long you’ll end up with a big black splotch that goes several pages deep. Weight is negligible.
mechanical pencils. They are non-refillable but cheap enough that it does not really matter. Their lead is spring-loaded and cushioned by a spring in the barrel which makes writing with them nice. Their weight is negligible.
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