intelligence iPods on intelligence
The iPod "knows somehow when I am reaching the end of my reserves, when my motivation is flagging," Mr. Greist insisted. "It hits me up with 'In Da Club,' and then all of a sudden I am in da club."
You're not alone if you believe your iPod has its own musical taste and inflicts it upon you, as if by an occult hand, through the Shuffle function. I'm convinced mine is fond of Modest Mouse, the Magnetic Fields, the Rolling Stones and Prefuse 73.
UPDATE: I just noticed this quote:
This logical explanation doesn't always jibe with users' experiences. Dan Cedarholm, a Web designer in Salem, Mass., insists that his iPod has a predilection for the indie punk band Fugazi. Even though he only has two of the band's albums stored on his "vintage" 5-gigabyte device, the band seems to dominate his iPod to a degree wildly disproportionate to the amount of space it occupies on his player's memory, he said.
Compare with this.
Comments
"Math guys" will tell you that streaks do occur, and that they fall within the realm of standard deviation. They will also tell you that at the end of infinity, all the dice-numbers that are supposed to roll, will have "evened out" to their mathematically-perfect expected rate-of-occurrence.
Posted by: sudama | August 26, 2004 2:34 PM
iPod Shufflers need to dig their faulty notions of what randomness looks like.
Posted by: sudama | August 26, 2004 2:38 PM
I really hope Apple adds some Smart Shuffle options to iTunes/iPod soon. I've got some great Smart Playlists I could share. It's probably tough because there are almost as many styles of managing an iTunes library as there are libraries.
Posted by: sudama | August 26, 2004 2:44 PM
Wired News notes that iPod's shuffle has been looked at in the New York Times before, as well as the Guardian, the New Yorker, and several other fine publications.
Posted by: sudama | August 26, 2004 2:47 PM
jeffcroft.com:
Posted by: sudama | August 26, 2004 2:50 PM
"You fool," gasped the AE, as he fell to one knee, black fluid running from his ears, "Have you not heard? This iPod can play music... at random."
Gizmodo: Circuits Discovers Shuffle.
Posted by: david | August 26, 2004 10:00 PM