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Sneaky little devil, that iPod shuffle. The beauty of this well-designed object is that, in its simplicity, it unmasked the digital complexity of the rest of my life. It has started a whirlwind of digital tidying in my house that is driving not just me but all my friends mad.
lowed by Thomas Tallis followed by Mozart followed by Pole followed by Zappa. Some of these bring a smile to my face; others lead me to wistful emotional archaeology.
This is a cautionary tale, and here’s how it all began. Recently, I received an iPod shuffle, which I love for a number of reasons. It was an expected gift, so it makes me happy because of what it connotes. 2009 also happens to be the 30-year anniversary of the birth of the “personal soundtrack.” In 1979 Sony launched the “Soundabout,” a portable, 14 oz. personal stereo that became better known as the Sony Walkman. Thus, I was actually gifted a reflective moment in the history of personal technology. The shuffle’s form factor is superb. It’s small and light and easy to carry around, and it has a built-in clip, which means I am not constantly dropping it. And it’s silver, so it matches my handbag. It is easy to set up and use. It does not violate Churchill’s Design Principle No. 1, which is to never interrupt humans on their path to gratification unless you are: A. trying to teach them something, B. a game designer
with a fiendish plot twist in mind, or C. you know they are Zen monks in training or members of a self-discipline cult. The shuffle takes you to gratification at autobahn speed; it goes straight from package to performance—no setup frustration, no waiting to use the new toy. Finally, I love the feature referenced in the marketing tagline— ” life is random”—during the 2005 product launch. As soon as it is plugged in, the shuffle auto-fills with songs randomly selected from a user’s music library (or a specific playlist).
But, here’s the rub, and the genesis of Churchill’s Design Principle No. 3: Know that your device, if truly successful, will bring about much change, will have knock-on effects in the life of the individual who embraces it. This principle is the closest I have ever come to sounding like a fortune cookie.
Generally I am not a person who likes random. I like to know what’s coming next. I like matching beats and evoking moods with music. I create playlists. So at first I thought the iPod broke with Churchill’s Design Principle No. 2: Keep the surprises to a minimum and user control to a maximum. However, this little device has brought some serendipity to my life, and as a result it has reinvigorated my love of my music collection. I have been reintroduced to music that has lain dormant, invisibly resting deep inside my computer in places I never browse. With the shuffle at the helm, I am regaled with Matisyahu followed by Abba followed by Motörhead fol-
Why this principle? Because my shuffle sparked a compulsion to tidy up, to consolidate my music. I reasoned that if one library were this much fun, how great might it be if my shuffle could sample from all my music? So, I decided to consolidate my i Tunes libraries from my three computers. Sounds easy, right? No. Here we go down the rabbit hole that began with the shuffle.
Let me tell you, trying to fuse three i Tunes libraries from different computers is not as easy as it should be. First, nothing to do with the music library itself, I encountered the problem of storage space. Between the three libraries, I have hundreds of gigabytes of music. As a result
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