What a load of "oh look at me write like Malcolm Gladwell" bull crap.

I mean, seriously, she doesn't go back near far enough. What about the printing press, that allowed people to read whatever we wanted (well, as long as what they wanted was a bible verse)? What about the invention of the roof, which allowed us to choose if we wanted to get wet or not when it was raining (or vice versa with the shower. Sort of.) The window shade that lets us satisfy our personal desire for light or darkness? Or eyelids, for that matter. Does anyone remember who invented the legs with which we can walk away from one person talking to us and go find someone more entertaining?

(Or indeed the eyes with which I began to skim once I had decided that she wasn't worth the full measure of time it would take to read carefully. God, I'm an egotist!)

She contradicts herself, in one paragraph ruing that film actors can't adjust to an audience like a live actor, then in the next mocking the television show that allowed viewers to decide if a certain character lived or died.

And she chooses 'grazing' for TV, as opposed to 'browsing' the internet, when 'surfing' is the more popular term for both.

Sure, people say dumb, overly enthusiastic crap about stuff all the time, especially when they're getting paid to do so. It's the apocalypse!

If iPod users are giving each other insider nods at the sight of white headphone cables, it's more interaction than on most of my commutes and 'experiences in the public space.' As for degrading the appreciation of music, this only became a problem with headphones and portable players, as opposed to listening to music in the car or in your den or bedroom.

And how you can even tie together the TiVo, which she argues makes people fill more of their time with TV, and the iPod, which seems primarily used to add musical enjoyment to activities one already would be doing -- exercise, commute, dinner with the wife? (Ha ha that last is a joke I am making.)

She really doesn't even seem to have a point. Admittedly, I was skimming, but I really didn't see it all get tied together. Just bitching about modern entertainment delivery (and pining for the good old days when everyone had to stand alert and listen to the Great Leader? I mean really, what? We were better off when the public space was filled with people sharing their woe about having only Mork & Mindy, Magnum, and Harper Valley PTA to choose from in prime time the night before?)

It seems like the whole rant is basically a way to try to worm her cute neologism -- egocasting -- into the vernacular. (Again, "look at me write like Malcolm Gladwell.")

Oh and another thing:

Music is not, in most situations, written about sitting in the symphony hall. (Though it is somewhat more frequently written about leaning against the back wall of a dank, smoky rock club that smells like 25 years of sweat and beer.) So though some music may be written to the experience of hearing it in certain circumstances, it is more often written about the experience of life, and so hearing it while riding under or walking through the city may in fact result in a more evocative and rich experience. "Soundtrack moments," as derivative of popular entertainment as the idea is, don't happen when you're listening intently in a concert hall, though the joys of the concert hall and the directed attention certainly exist. I remember Television's 'Marquee Moon' coming on as I was riding through New York City nearly 20 years ago, and the experience was tremendously powerful. I also remember quite clearly listening on my walkman to Camper's 'All Her Favorite Fruit' as I cut across the railroad tracks behind the Dunkin Donuts to my job at a video store the summer of one of my most formative crushes. In both cases, the flavor is a distinctive intersection of the mood of a moment of life and the emotion evoked by a piece of music.

So, do I get the points?

I wanna make sure I get invited to the Qvitational.

Can we do the parkway/driveway thing next?

And what's the deal with eggplant? There's no egg in there and there's no ham in a hamburger. Ever seen any apple or pine in pineapple?

As long as mankind exists, there will be technological innovations into convenience that some will bemoan. I know that some day I too will kvetch before I finally give up and get my own GPS/MP3/DVD tooth implant.

... If only mankind could figure out how to edit typos from posted comments in MT.

Neil Postman's book Technopoly opens with a recounting of a scene in a legend retold by Sophocles to Plato of the Judgement of Thamus (got all that?):
The story goes that Thamus said many things to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts, which it would take too long to repeat; but when they came to the letters, "This invention, O king," said Theuth, "will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memories; for it is a drug (pharmakon) of memory and wisdom that I have discovered." (Plat. Pheadr. 274e)

But Thamus replied, "Most ingenious Theuth, one man has the ability to beget arts, but the ability to judge of their usefulness or harmfulness to their users belongs to another; [275a] and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess. For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented a drug (pharmakon) not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem [275b] to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise. (Plat. Phaedr. 274e-275a)
[the above pasted from http://web.mit.edu/m-i-t/articles/crane.html]

So, writing is a technology, and it unquestionably shapes our experience and ourselves. This is expounded upon in The Axmaker's Gift: a double-edged history of human culture by James Burke. We trade one technology for another because we see in it a better deal, and it may be only later that we realize the consequences, both positive and negative, of doing so. Rousseau argued, for example, that we gave up food gathering for agriculture, and made a crucial mistake, because we then formed society and introduced contention over resources, abandoning the happy "state of nature." Lucky for us, he never had a driver's license.
Without question, Walkman, iPod, TiVo shape our time, our attention spans, etc. and probably in some way our public discourse, in some ways for the worse. On the other hand, broadcast media such as television before the VCR or radio before the tape recorder had its downsides as well, not always elevating conversation around important topics or serving up high art, but pandering to the lowest common denominator in entertainment, driven by the economics of advertising. Who would have predicted that in New York City, filled with a diversity of listeners, the radio band would be filled not with a rich melange of cultural and musical voices, but with a small number of mega-stations serving up similar fare?
The crucial weakness in Postman's book is that he argues, for example, that the clock was invented by monks that they might know when to pray, then appropriated by industrialists so as to wring the most productivity from their workers, and then he concludes that, obviously, the clock has done more to put man's mind on the material world than on the Kingdom of God. The evidence that TiVo owners watch more TV is the kind of empirical data that he is thoroughly lacking.
So, sure, when we can adopt technologies that allow us to control what we experience rather than having our _programming_ handed to us,
a) it will change us, and
b) we'll do it every time.

BTW, I have no TiVo or iPod; just DSL and cable TV we don't watch (not even for the Superbowl). And I probably never would have read that article had I not seen it on this blog.

The argument that the clock created the modern industrial age belonged originally to Marx, not Postman--did he credit the source?

I can't remember if he credited Marx; the whole annoying book was setting up straw men and blowing them away with a rail gun. Not as bad as Clifford Stohl, who basically comes across as an idiot.
As to the original question, all new technologies that allow us to control some aspect of our lives we are likely to adopt, but to what extent? Are we completely blind to the negative consequences such that we can never be surprised? I want to be surprised sometimes; that's why I read the newspaper and don't just visit a customized portal. I want to communicate; that's why I use technology to do so. And notice that new technologies really take off when they allow not only control over our own experience, but the ability to share that experience with other people, such as blogging, podcasting (http://www.ipodder.org/whatIsPodcasting) and TiVoCasting. I think people actually want variety and novelty, but if they don't, the technologies that exist already allow them to blissfully ignore the rest of us who do.

That straw man and rail gun thing sounds like fun. Though it would make a pretty lame video game. Grand Theft Auto: Shriner's Convention is much more fun.

I do think that it's interesting that she didn't say anything about cell phones, which allows the customization of communication (though of course it was better when you had to do it in a glass box.) Which speaks to Jonathan's point about using the devices to communicate, and find your tribe, perhaps.

I said the thing about the glass boxes in sarcastic dismissal of the whole mess, though come to think of it, they were a blessing. Remember how at the time we thought they were for the privacy and quiet of the person inside? Ha ha naive.

I think I missed mocking her final words: "But an unwillingness to recognize the potential excesses of this power—egocasting, fetishization, a vast cultural impatience, and the triumph of individual choice over all critical standards—is perilous indeed." The triumph of individual choice over critical standards? Look, I hate Britney as much as the next pretentious scotch-drinking ersatz cultural elite, but really, this is just a preposterous peril. Anyhow, the devices in question actually give the power to opt-out of lowest-common-denominator entertainment, such as Judge Joe Brown on the TV at the tire store.