Pundits claim that the iPod is transforming American life. It wouldn't be the first time they were wrong

A top-of-the-line iPod can hold 15,000 songs or 25,000 photos. And yet we're willing to bet it is still not capacious enough to hold half of the idiotic crap that has been written about iPods. As if the thousands of magazine and newspaper articles weren't enough, this fall sees a glut of iPod-hyping books, among them iPod Fan Book, iPod Shuffle Fan Book, and The iPod Fetish Book.

Given this cottage industry, it is surprising how rarely the phrase "iPod, therefore I am" gets used as a title. It's such a perfect combination of pretentiousness, inanity, and halfhearted cleverness that by all rights it ought to appear atop every pop-sociology trend story or self-indulgent think piece about the iPod. Instead, this particular headline has turned up just 20, maybe 30 times in the past two and half years. You can only conclude that, despite all appearances to the contrary, writers and editors are not in fact competing to publish the very worst writing on the subject possible.

Dylan Jones is. It's the only explanation. Not only is his upcoming book called iPod, Therefore I Am, it surpasses every expectation that title raises, being filled with lines like, "Almost overnight, the iPod became a private club with a membership of millions," which would be fairly astute if it were said sarcastically. To Jones the iPod is "a black hole of limitless dimensions" with the power "to create a bright new tomorrow."

Recently Fortune declared that "the iPod has become a true cultural and social phenomenon."

But the more revealing phenomenon is how much effort has gone into convincing us of the iPod's social importance. What tells you more about upper-middle-class America: that it likes to have lots of songs on a small device, or that it thinks the fact that it has lots of songs on a small device is worthy of a Newsweek cover story?

Flush with the assurance that the participation of celebrities renders any trend deeply meaningful, magazine editors constantly trot out names of famous iPod users—J. Lo! Gwyneth!—and the songs they listen to. An iPod playlist isn't just songs grouped together, it's a window to the soul, "a Myers-Briggs for the digital age," according to the Washington Post. Two recent books, The iPod Playlist Book and The Pocket DJ, contain virtually nothing but sample playlists.

There's a backlash, of course, but that's merely the flip side of the same assumptions about the iPod's importance. Is the fear of being caught with an uncool playlist really a DSM-worthy anxiety? Are iPods really responsible for the fragmentation of America and the decline of social intercourse? "The iPod people," said the New York Times, are "corked off from reality by their ear buds." How dare you fiends listen to music! "As for the Walkman," said Fortune, answering the obvious question raised by iPod sociology, "it never impacted behavior...quite the way the iPod has."

Funny, that's not what they said back in the early '80s. Indeed, there's very little that people have written about the iPod that wasn't claimed of the Walkman 25 years ago. "They've become an everyday part of American culture," the Washington Post gushed in May 1981, "not to mention an indisputable index of hipness." Celebrities used them—Suzanne Somers! Vitas Gerulaitis!—and members of the club would tip headphones at one another, "like Mercedes-Benz owners honking when they pass," one devotee told the Times. "The Walkman has become so pervasive that it may help define a new style of music," said the Post. But there was a dark side, too. The Walkman was "insidious," the Post warned nine months later, "a potent symbol of an antisocial electronic future."

We don't even want to tell you what the headlines were.