Leander Kahney, Wired News editor and Cult of Mac weblog moderator, has written a fascinating article entitled The Cult of iPod. Kahney surveys the many influences the iPod has had on popular culture in the four years since its introduction: from the ubiquitous white earbuds to podcasts, from playlist anxiety to iPod-ready automobiles. Although I’ve owned an iPod for the past three years, and am at least vaguely aware of everything Kahney covers, it is still surprising, when it’s all laid out in one catalog-like article, just how influential the iPod has become.

A particularly fascinating response to the iPod’s influence is the anti-iPod backlash. One of the sites Kahney links to is an amusing rant by London Daily Telegraph journalist Bryony Gordon entitled “Why I’m turning a deaf ear to the Pod botherers”. I can understand why some people tire of the iPod hype, but I just don’t get why people want to buy an iPod just to smash it. I guess some people don’t have the mental acuity to differentiate between a thing’s hype and the thing itself.

Leander Kahney’s article is a teaser for his upcoming book of the same title. His previous book, Cult of Mac, is a nice coffee-table book full of pictures and stories about the Macintosh faithful. I bought a copy for Wendy’s father last year; Bobby is a charter member of the cult, having first drunk the Macintosh Kool-Aid back in 1984.

Update: the Cult blog has a preview of the new book.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 3rd, 2005 at 6:17 pm and is filed under Gadgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.