Is that 3000-9000 songs in your pocket?

The Ipod has certainly proved itself to me as being the most awesome music tool I've ever owned. It's just a good tool in general. Last week I had to navigate my way to my basement to replace a fuse and it was my trusty Ipod that shone the way. How's that for thinking outside the box?

In days of yore I used to tote around my discman and half a dozen cds in a backpack to enjoy tunes. Kids today probably know nothing about discs skipping, but that was a constant concern before I 'leveled up' to anti-skip. Cripes, I could hardly walk around with my cd player without it convulsing to a halt every few steps.

I guess that's one of those things that will define my generation. While my parents used to talk to me about 8 tracks, records, and the difficulties in maintaining them, I suppose I'll be regaling my children with stories about keeping my discman steady and parallel to the horizon at all times.

So anyway, when I finally moved up to an mp3 player I used it for years until it basically fell apart. It only held about 30 songs, and from there I made an insane leap to my 30 gig Ipod video. For the past two years I've been utterly spoiled to be able to carry around every song I've ever bought or downloaded in one place. At the same time, I'm filled with the fear having it fall from my pocket and destroy every song I've ever bought or downloaded. With great power comes great responsibility I guess.

At the pace music technology is growing and how much it's changed since I was in junior high I can hardly begin to guess what the next generation will have. My guess is it will be small silver wrist bands that transmit a streaming playlist of every song every recorded to your wireless earphones. And did I mention the earphones are invisible and contain upwards of eleventy billion terabytes of space. Plus when you're bored of listening to songs that do exist, you can set your infinity player to improvise creating songs based on your mood and preferences. Sadly it will take another generation before they can make one that doesn't set parts of your brain on fire. But that'll be their story.