A Life in Pods

Are we removing soul with our efforts to simplify?

The ipod, like the coffee pod, offers not the experience of the thing itself but instead a simulation of such, neatly packaged and conveniently sized. Both pods promise a tidy singular experience: just enough coffee for one, thank you very much, just enough music for me. Gone is the chaotic café, the boisterous concert hall. Gone are the coffee grinds littering the kitchen counter, the friends gathered around the living room stereo. What remains is a pared-down product from which the soul—and the society—has been neatly extracted.

via A Writer’s Life.