Next monday, 2/4, at 5:30 PM at the Hatcher Graduate Library, The UM University Library presents The Future of the Book: A Conversation with Newsweek's Steven Levy. Steven Levy is the author of The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness and wrote the recent Newsweek cover storyThe Future of Reading that accompanied the launch of Amazon's Kindle reading device. He was also the guest editor of The Best of Technology Writing 2007. This event is free and open to the public, so show up to join the conversation!

I have to say I was intrigued by your post. The book about iPods I thought would be especially interesting, because I never thought of the iPod as "Perfect" or even fairly close to that. Having read now half of the book, I found it to be absolutely preposterous. From Levy's glowing description of Steve Jobs as a king among men and dismissal of iPod critics with Straw Man arguments, his book is little more than a two hundred plus page advert for Apple. I'd be interested to go see him talk were his discussion today a) about the iPod and not Kindle and b) not at a time while I was busy working hard at the Ann Arbor District Library.

Just to clarify, I don't think iPods are zombie-producing devices, I don't think that they are causing our nation's children to tune in and drop out (though Levy paints iPod critics as this. In fact, of all the criticisms he chooses to use a professor's column from Christianity Today saying portable music devices "block out the voice of God.") I do happen to think that iPods in fact do the world of music little service and possible harm and have gained their "coolness," to which Levy devotes an entire chapter, from trendiness and their hefty price tag.