The Economist Names 2000s the iPod, iPhone Decade (Maybe That’s A Bad Thing)

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ipod_iphone
Used with a cc-license, thanks to juanpol on flickr.

The Economist’s quarterly mag Intelligent Life did round robin interviews with a number of design luminaries, literati and museum curators about what objects define life in the aughts.

The iPod and iPhone came up most frequently, leading the editors to name this the iDecade.

That doesn’t mean they have anything nice to say about them, however.

Most of the comments veer towards the “these devices cut us off from humanity” type.  Young’uns in other times were more social and less social media, apparently, we were all the better for it.

A few choice excerpts:

STEPHEN JONES, Milliner
iPhone. Txt spk
What is the Mini of today? Probably the iPhone. I wish I could say floor-length dresses or big green hats, but I can’t. Communication is the issue now, not freedom and mobility: iPhone, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter. This is a big sea-change: it is more about communication through the word and less about the image…

DOMINIC SANDBROOK, Author of “White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties
iPods. Extreme materialism. Politicians cycling.
People listening to iPods on their way to work—and not merely as a symbol of technology, but as a representation of a sort of introversion, a retreat within our own bubble…

EKOW ESHUN, Artistic director, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London
The Prius. iPods. Style jams
The Prius is the car of the decade. It’s unlovely in lots of ways, but it has become an icon of aspiration. And then the iPod and social networking. Something that spools from these is that we don’t really have style subcultures anymore. Instead we have a playlist culture, where you’re allowed to mash up everything around you in a sort of pick’n’mix…

Via More Intelligent Life

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