Take the podcast phenomenon: Individuals webcast sometimes illegal and often intelligent digital audio – from news to music to documentaries – connecting listeners around the world. While a fragmented pop music industry lets you “micro-select your musical universes,” says Thompson, technology has helped people break out of their tribes. And that’s a good thing, he says. “The more people listen to different kinds of music, the more they excitedly share the news with their friends and crave seeing artists live. And concerts are fantastic communal experiences.”

Although its harshest critics tend to think the iPod is anti-social, most users share playlists with family and friends, and nightclubs around the world host playlist parties, where individuals have a designated time to play their favourite tunes for everyone. There is also a new social phenomenon called “jack sharing,” where people – sometimes strangers – cross paths in public and plug their earbud cords into each other’s jacks, considered a profoundly intimate gesture.

Dré Dee, a magazine editor in Toronto, experienced just such an intimate moment when she started dating someone new. After a romantic dinner, they began playing duelling iPods. “It turned out that with every single song either of us played, the other one would be saying, ‘Oh my God, I love that song!’ It’s like we had one more thing in common; we were perfect for each other.”

To blame an eroding social ecosystem on a miniature hard drive encased in white plastic seems foolish and futile. The popularity of the iPod itself, though, is likely to erode over time, thanks to so-called “iPod killers.” Telecom giants worldwide have been racing to produce cellphones that combine a phone, TV, computer, still and video camera and digital music player.

But the real danger is that the iPod will lose its cool. An icon is vulnerable as soon as it gains popularity. Hipsters like Seth Godin, the author and online marketing guru, hide their telltale white earbuds because they’re people who, as Godin told Wired magazine, “like to customize their life and feel like they’re independent.” Or maybe the photograph in last January’s Time magazine of President Bush holding an iPod did it. After all, how cool can the iPod be if even Dubya has one? 

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