Michael Bull is getting a flurry of attention with his research on mobile music. [You may also want to check out the very good "Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman"]
Real Bull:
...portable music players are multi-faceted transformative devices, a tool whereby users manage space, time and the boundaries around the self. [...] There's the visual domination of explaining urban experience [...] but if you look at it through sound you get different explanations. We live in a visually dominated culture and suffer constant bombardment by visible messages. [...] it is because of this deafening visual chorus that exercising choice over what we listen to is so important. [...]
Using headphones helps to keep the world at bay and reclaim some space. [...] But what you listen to and when has a more subversive edge as well. It can undermine some of the messages aimed at you. [...] Donning a pair of earbuds also grants a certain amount of licence. They let listeners become witnesses without the risk of getting too involved. The earphones absolve them of some responsibility. Some women use earphones to deflect unwanted attention, finding it easier to avoid responding because they look already occupied. In the same way, removing earphones when talking to someone sends a strong message about how interested one is in what is being said. It pays the speaker a compliment. [BBC]
One of the interesting things is that with vinyl, the aesthetic was in the cover of the record. You had the sleeve, the artwork, the liner notes. With the rise of digital, the aesthetic has left the object -- the record sleeve -- and now the aesthetic is in the artifact: the iPod, not the music. The aesthetic has moved from the disc to what you play it on [...] and the iPod mini will appeal to those who want an artifact for style [...] Half the people I've talked to so far download music illegally. The investment they're making is going into the artifact, not the music. The market is moving toward the artifact, not the music to fill it.
[...] a lot of people use it to go to work, for commuting. I found that they use the same music on a regular basis. They will often play the same half-dozen tunes for three months, and each part of the journey has its own tune [...] It gives them control of the journey, the timing of the journey and the space they are moving through. It's a generalization, but the main use (of the iPod) is control.
[...] music allows people to use their eyes when they're listening in public. I call it nonreciprocal looking. Listening to music lets you look at someone but don't look at them when they look back. The earplugs tell them you're otherwise engaged. It's a great urban strategy for controlling interaction.
It's also very cinematic. The music allows you to construct narratives about what's going on. Or you use it to control thoughts. A lot of people don't like to be alone with their thoughts. The best way to avoid that is to listen to music.
[...] People like to control their environment, and the iPod is the perfect way to manage your experience. Music is the most powerful medium for thought, mood and movement control.
[Wired]
Japanese companies are preparing for the commercial launch of a "robot suit" that helps aged or physically disabled people walk, get up the stairs or seat themselves to relax without a chair. [...] The powered suit, code-named HAL-3 (Hybrid Assistive Leg), consists of a computer and batteries in the backpack as well as four actuators attached around the knees and hip joints. The motor-powered devices guide movement of the legs as the computer calculates the user's next motion by detecting faint electric signals from the muscle [...] With the equipment, the user can walk at a speed of four kilometres (2.5 miles) per hour with little physical exertion and avoid the jerky stop-go moves of ordinary robots.
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BBC notes that "the best candidate for passing the Turing test [JS: being unable to tell whether you are talking to a computer or a real person] is the Natachata program that conducts smutty conversations via text messages. Regular users of pornographic SMS chat may be shocked to find out that they are swapping dirty talk with machines rather than young women and men. But it's a fair bet that they are because the Natachata chatbot, written by former rocket scientist Simon Luttrell, is so widely used by porn chat merchants. [...] The program works hard to conceal its computer identity. It does not work to a set script, instead it compares incoming messages to a database of 100,000 sentences and works out what is being talked about. It then crafts a response based on what is in the message, turns it into text slang, adds spelling mistakes and then sends it out. It even adds a random delay to the return message because, if they were fired back too quickly, people would guess that they were computer-generated. [...] 'There is about 5% who realise it is a computer and use it even more because of that.'"
