Which came first — the iPod or iTunes? (or, iJournalism: The Future is Coming!)

Of course, Apple's now-ubiquitous iPod (first unveiled in late 2001) came before its wired, fully integrated music store iTunes (2003).  The literal question is fairly simple to answer, but what I mean to suggest is a much more philosophical question — more along the lines of a "chicken-or-the-egg" question than an historical query:  What really made the iPod... the iPod!?

My dad and I had a conversation about the iPod during a brief trip home for the Labor Day weekend, and we got to talking about its broader social implications.

"You know," he postulated, "the iPod didn't make the iPod what it is — iTunes did."  In other words, he said, what made the little black boxes and white earbuds a cultural phenomenon was the seamless integration of the music, music store, and music player, under one iBrand.

I need more time to fully flesh out my thoughts here, but I think that the advent of the iPod may serve as a roadmap for the rebirth of journalism in a digital age.

There are several outgrowths of my dad's profound statement.  First, what my dad argued was that personal music players had been around since the late 1970s.  The iPod's digitizing of music, while arguably technologically revolutionary, really didn't change how you consumed the content.  But iTunes, he says, changed how people bought and sold music, and thus, permanently altered the social landscape.  In essence, Apple smoothed and shortened the distribution chain of musical content, integrating multiple little black boxes (the music player and the computer) into one comprehensive system that fits in your pocket, running on easily-accessible software on your home computer.  Perhaps journalistic entrepreneurs ought to examine the distribution chain of journalistic content, and look at it as a process to be smoothed and shortened.

What's also important about my dad's argument as it might be cross-applied to journalists is its emphasis on the importance of content distribution, and its minimization of the importance of the box which stores the content itself.  The iPod is nothing without the smooth mechanics of iTunes, the software — or in more general terms, a content aggregator — which allows people to sort the content they already own and to buy the content they don't already own.  In more general terms, it isn't the little black box that defines the content, but the content that defines the little black box it comes in.

This last point really gets to the heart of what I really feel about the failings of journalism in the digital age.  We've spent all this time looking at the little black boxes (the media) that house our content — the newspaper, television, radio — bemoaning their inability to make money as though its the fault of antiquated technology or method.  What the iPod and iTunes can teach us is that the same old content can be just as relevant and engaging when seamlessly integrated into a medium where people are engaged, or can become engaged.

Okay, that's it for now... This isn't stream of consciousness by any means, but I really need to develop and refine this more fully and succinctly.  It's just helped to organize some of my thoughts!