(Originally posted on learnd.co.uk.)
Yesterday was probably the first gloriously sunny day London has seen for quite some time. Not only was the sky clear, but the temperature was warm. As a direct result, i decided to walk the 1.3 miles from the station to the office to enjoy the weather. Upon making this decision, as if by magic, my ipod decided to play U2 – Beautiful day. “Clever ipod!” i thought.
No, not really.
But why not?
Why couldn’t my ipod be as clever as this brief moment of serendipity suggests? Or more importantly, when will my ipod be this clever? At the time of writing, Apple’s latest release of itunes provides the itunesDJ feature. This is a glorified rolling ‘Genius’ playlist which, based on number of factors, attempts to play your music library in an order it has established as most like to be pleasing to the ear.
Let’s think a moment about our portable music history. The Sony Walkman, easily the first personal, truly portable music player that let consumers take the music they wanted, where they wanted. We’ve come a long way since then, in some areas at least. We can now carry more songs, access them with greater ease and ultimately listen to them at higher quality. In other areas however, we have advanced very little.
Until the introduction of the genius feature, playlists were very static. In the 80’s you made a mix tape, the 90’s a CD and 00’s a digital playlist. All of these formats required your input as a DJ. For those unfamiliar with the ‘Genius’ feature of itunes, it allows you to pick a starting song, and the computer will decide what songs will flow well after it. Being able to do this on the latest ipods means an original playlist can be created in a second. This is all well and good, but it’s only the beginning for dynamic playlists. Imagine an iphone, it plays music, has internet connectivity and knows where you are. Now project your thoughts, along the lines of Tim Berners Lee and the semantic web/linked data principle. From knowing the location, the device can determine the weather, the time of day, the season, the history… Tapping into the semantic web would allow it to create a constantly evolving playlist from your library or even introduce you to new artists. Walking over Waterloo Bridge at Sunset? I wonder which song you’ll hear.
Now let’s go further, many years down the line to a time when your iphone monitors the blood glucose levels of diabetics, the heart rate of joggers and the emotions of the wearer. Wouldn’t that make for some interesting listening?
As technology continues to become smaller, better connected and smarter, dynamicism or ‘On the fly’ features are going to crop up a lot more. As Tim points out in his TED talk, the key is access data. The more data avliable, the more specific these features can be. This is both an amazing opportunity and a scary prospect. Once all that data is out there, things can get personal. Real personal. Targeted advertising has already been on the web for a number of years now, it’s only a matter of time before it crosses over. Be it via tracking iphones, or retina recognition, it’s coming and this revolution will be televised. It will be on every street corner in full HD with speakers aimed directly at you, speaking to you, influencing you.
Oh the times, they are a changin’. Better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone.
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