If my iPod is me then am I free?

I've acquired an iPod. I've also studied the relationship between new technologies and feminism. This is a dangerous combination.

There are those who believe that new technologies afford us the opportunity to create very postmodern, decentred selves. My blog, here, these words I'm writing now, could be seen as a part of that. My thoughts expressed online are a fundamental part of myself, possibly the simulation or the simulcra of me if you subscribe to Baudrillard's theories. By allowing me to take control, this blogging technology is freeing me from being trapped in any one of those little boxes that society likes to put me in. It enables me to cross boundaries. So, following this argument to a logical conclusion, my iPod is allowing me to do the same thing. The music held within is me and by using it I am freely creating a self that I have chosen.

Now this is all well and good, but I fear the responsibility for this new, liberated me may be weighing rather too heavily on my shoulders. I log into online music stores and browse, but I can't help but wonder what people will think of me if I choose certain songs. Part of the attraction of the 'Pod for me is that it enables me to revisit all of the tunes of my youth, all of those albums I bought and lost along the way, songs that remind me of times and places and so on. All of that is a very personal history that I'm almost afraid to expose, even though nobody else is probably going to find out what I'm listening to. I did go to a party once where people were encouraged to bring 'Pods filled with playlists to share, to be plugged into the sound system and exposed to all. It felt almost dirty, like entering people's heads, reading their private thoughts. There was, however, a perverse pleasure in finding out that someone had a secret fetish for the Nolan Sisters and desperately wanted us to hear "I'm in the mood for dancing." Somehow the 'Pod provokes emotions that rummaging through someone's CD collection doesn't. I mean, you usually have to go to their home to do that, to be invited into their space. The iPod goes everywhere with them. It's a simultaneously public and private space, bounded by those little white headphones.

One little relief from 'Pod anxiety is the sheer hilarity of the software that tracks what you buy so that it can recommend more music that you might like. My boyfriend takes the pragmatic view that, as I haven't bought much from the stores, they don't really know what I like and are thus suggesting a broad range of things. I personally think that they may have got inside my head. The other day I was directed towards the original cast recording of "South Pacific." How did they know that one of the first songs I learnt as a child was "I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair"? How did they glean, from the smattering of jazz and "90's music" that I've purchased, that I once spent hours hunched over an electronic keyboard struggling to play "Bali Ha'i"? I feel drawn towards attempting some kind of interaction with the software now. I have wicked thoughts about trying to confuse it, perhaps making it crash because it can't figure me out. I heard a reggae version of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" performed by Grace Jones the other day. I wonder how they would categorise me if I bought that?