The iPod People

In the last few years, we’ve seen the rise of gadget porn—images and text that glorify high-end or high-tech devices and gadgets. Sure, certain segments of the population have always been gadget-driven: audiophiles, car junkies, the power-tool crazed. But there’s something about technology that has taken the craving for gizmos to a new level. As Washington Post technology reporter Mark Leibovich has said, “More than most realms, technology tends to breed fetishistic dedication.” It’s the gadget-as-fetish angle that most clearly captures this technolust. Wired magazine, never known for its subtlety, comes right to the point: each month it runs a column that features the latest high-tech toys. The column’s name? “Fetish.” Personal digital assistants have been the fetish objects of choice over the past few years, with first the Palm Pilot and more recently the BlackBerry—PDAs being the must-have tools of millions of gadget freaks. (The BlackBerry engenders such obsession in its users that it has earned the nickname CrackBerry.) Fans of Apple Computer Inc.’s products have always had a cultlike air about them, but their desire reached truly crazed heights with the release of the iMac desktop computer in the late 1990s. This blobject (an object with a curvilinear, flowing design) was suddenly everywhere and spawned a whole generation of what came to be called cuddletech—technology seen or marketed as being cute, friendly, or just plain cuddly.