The iPodfather

Who is Steve Jobs? Only the CEO of Apple, the leading consumer technology company in the world. No biggie.He's not an actor, musician, model or anything important like that, so why dedicate a blog to him?

I've previously not even given this guy a second thought. But Steve Jobs matters more than any celebrity, not merely for the fact that he helped to engineer the pretty MacBook that I'm typing this on.

A quick bio reads like this:

• Jobs founded Apple, out of his basement, and basically revolutionised personal computing.
• He was fired from Apple, the business that he helped create, in 1985.
• He went on to found NeXT (a computer company) and Pixar.
• Apple purchased NeXT and in 1998, Jobs was back at as CEO of Apple.
• From there till now, Apple has given the world the iPod, iPhone and iPad alongside several personal computers

Steve Jobs basically then, can be credited with the content that we study in this paper. For instance, the iPod introduced us to the first ultra-portable music player, which meant that you could carry your entire music library with you, with a ten hour battery life. Unheard of. On top of that, without Steve Jobs we wouldn't have had Toy Story or Finding Nemo. Eek.

Without these technologies, some of the current issues and debates would possibly not be circulating, such as Mark Bauerlein's concern's of "The Dumbest Generation", or more recently, the health risks such as hearing loss and pedestrian deaths associated with these technologies. Not to mention the issues of advertising, gender and many of the other topics discussed in this course.

Without Steve Jobs at the helm of Apple, would the phenomena of the personal computer of the ultra-portable mP3 player have occurred? Did Jobs merely accelerate the inventions? Or is he simply a face behind a collaborative effort?

In light of what I have discovered about Jobs, I would like to suggest that he has not singlehandedly, but in large part, transformed and moulded the present technoculture. He is The iPodfather.

Technoculture is gender-neutral!...or is it?

They say technology is gendered, a man dominates not only the Technoculture world but some may suggest that they have dominated many other aspects of our world all together. Is this true? this can become a lengthy debate one that may ruffle a few feathers. However we cannot dismiss cyberfeminism which argues that females are not disadvantaged or marginalized in relation to new media.

Royse et al's study did find that females are less likely to buy games more directed towards the female base, therefore females game buyers did not go out of their way to buy a "girly" game, this may possibly be due to the fact that females do not want to be viewed as any different to any other gamer whatever gender they may be, a game centered around pink backgrounds and saving the stranded kittens may not seem any more amusing to the female base than any other player above the age of ten, however this can also be up for debate.

Lets take gaming as an example and the negative stereotypes attached to the female "character" so is it true when people say that "sex sells" many may agree and many feminists may root for it, is it possible that technology is so gendered towards the male audience, that using women as sexual objects no longer seems strange? This may need a lot of research and until one has all the facts we cannot fully argue whether technology is or is not gendered, many assumptions do not make facts but this is a starting point.