Levels of iPod literacy as social practice

I just watched a news report about the imminent release of the iPhone in the U.S.A. People were sitting in a queue along 5th Avenue in New York City, to get in early when they are released tomorrow.

In Australia we won't see it for about a year more, but it got me thinking about why the news would focus on such a story. The iPod has indeed risen to the level of a cultural icon. Already, there is a rapidly evolving realm of writing and scholarship on these compact music libraries (Jones, 2005; Kahney, 2005; Levy, 2006; Thomas, 2006).

For my part, I considered what meaning-making practices seem to be generally at play. iPods are generally used, in meaning-making process in terms of 'interpretation' (Kress, 2003) as opposed to 'articulation'. In terms of the multiple modes of textual design that are interpreted, they manifest in individual practice in two main fields: the outside world, or context of iPod use, and the soundtrack the iPod provides. The relationship between these two sets of texts is an example of multimodal social practice. But is it literacy?

How do individuals use the soundtrack the iPod provides to augment their external reality? To what extent are emotion, intellect, sociocultural influences, purpose and physical environment each involved in the choice of what one listens to on an iPod at any one time? There is a distinct different in the multimodal literacy practices where one intentionally listens to specific music because one is in the mood for a certain song in a certain situation, as opposed to simply putting the iPod on shuffle and randomly hearing (and enjoying or not) a selection of songs that evoke individual memories (Jones, 2005). Listening to a news podcast on a train in order to prepare for a meeting, is a different multimodal literacy practice compared to surreptitiously listening to pop songs whilst in class. And this is only considering the audio features of the iPod.

Meaning-making designs other than audio are present in the multimodal textual landscape of iPod use. Showing photos to friends using an iPod is another literacy event distinct from spending hours organising playlists. Identity, s is often displayed through different social practices during the use of iPods: the overt display of an iPod in public has a range of different (and related) meaning-making potentials to the intentional hiding of the device within one's clothing. To display an iPod is in way to claim: I am part of this! Or so it seems.

The problem about the relationship between the soundtrack one runs on an iPod and the context of its use, is that sometimes they don't fit neatly together. A man was recently critically injured after being hit by a tram in Melbourne. Witnesses reported that he had ear-phones in and appeared not to have heard the tram coming. Was he listening to an iPod? A music player of any kind? It doesn't really matter: the point is, the soundtrack he was running and the dangers of his physical environment were not congruent. The same situation may be observed by students listening to iPods during lessons: where attention is required, it cannot be fully given; the soundtrack generally doesn't match the focus of a lesson. Of course, this may not always be the case.

One can imagine situations where the soundtrack of an iPod could be used productively, to augment a specific situation to create a congruent multimodal experience. This has clear implications for learning. The use of podcasts to augment class based lessons is one example. One can also imagine guided audio tours of cities or landmarks using podcasts. Then again, there are already examples of this: in some Japanese cities you can access information on specific places in your physical vicinity using mobile phones (Thompson, 2005).

Well, now that we have the iPhone coming out, with an iPod fan base ready to go crazy over them, further possibilities may emerge for ways to augment reality using technology. What new soundtracks will we run to our lives? More importantly, how will we choose to access soundtracks? We will of course have to wait and see.

References

Jones, D. (2005). iPod therefore I am. New York and London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Kahney, L. (2005). The Cult of iPod. San Fransisco: No Starch Press.

Levy, S. (2006). The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness. New York: Simon & Schulster.

Thomas, M. (2006). iPod Education: Innovations in the Implementation of Mobile Learning [Electronic Version]. The Knowledge Tree: An e-journal of learning innovation, 10, 4-15. Retrieved 8 December, 2006 from http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/edition-10/ipods-in-educationinnovations-in-the-implementation-of-mobile-learning/

Thompson, H. (2005). Phone Book: a handy guide to the world's favourite invention. London: Thames & Hudson.