It's an oblong of white plastic that reminds me a little irrationally of the obelisk at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey, rendered small enough to dangle around the neck. It's mysterious and charged with futurity. It doesn't tell you what song is playing or what's next or much else. That's the thing. As a result, each song fades out with a frisson—what'll be next? This experience is basically what the device sells. Not "shuffle"—everyone's computer and chunky iPod Paper-weight already offer that. The point here is, only that. You left your choices at home. You're hostage to what's coming, and the risk that it might suck. And this makes the day gleam, a little. Contingency, the ancients called it.
I walk past a homeless-looking guy and we stare at each other. His body is covered with the traces of his daily life, stains on his thrashed sweatshirt, red splotches on his cheeks. This is a chance encounter, the other contingency. For a second I think I am thinking about him, how very empathetic of me, but behind that I am wondering what he thinks of me, a de-bodied body with my technology worn outside my clothes for all the honest world to feel.
{thanks to Maya}, who also said this:
I just yearned to live in a time when vaudeville happened, when Broadway and burlesque happened, to walk through New York streets of 75 years past, to use the period artifacts in their period--toothbrushes, eyeglasses, transportation, talking movies, shoes. To eat, to drive, to wear slips and read newspapers, to do all the day-to-day humdrum stuff of life, but have the activities and objects enlivened by the novelty of my own anachronism. I'd like to not know what's appropriate in language and action, while at the same time knowing what's coming next, historically.
That sounds like a theme park. Westworld, or that one Star Trek episode where they get transported back to 1920's gangster-era Chicago.