iPod Obituary

Even before I got around to buying myself an iPod, the pundits are writing its obituary. Only in the world of technology can a Rip Van Winkle emerge from a decade long slumber can fit right in. All you miss is a couple of over-rated hype cycles that have all but fizzled out by then. You just latch on the newest fad wave that comes along and all of a sudden the last ten years that you were absent does not count for so much - you are just as up to speed as everyone else who was around the whole time. Something seems wrong about that picture. When history becomes discrete packages that can stand alone without needing a the broader canvas of events and ideas that helped form them, it does not feel real. Large chunks of time can be purged out of the records without impacting much.