Summary: Music, Culture and Society: Michael Bull <strong>Sounding Out Cosmopolitanism: iPod Culture and Recognition</strong> <em>Michael Bull (Sussex)</em> In this lecture I argue that iPod culture represents the antithesis of the ideal of the cosmopolitan citizen inscribed in Western culture, that cosmopolitanism increasingly resides in the content of users iPods. That users increasingly turn away from the complexities and contingencies of urban everyday life. iPod culture signifies the development of a new listening self that calibrates the personal use of sound to the desire of the user – iPod culture represents a culture in which individuals increasingly micro-manage their experience. The lecture will discuss the social ramifications of what I refer to as a hyper-post-fordist appropriation of social space. Michael Bull is Reader in Media and Film at the University of Sussex and has written widely on sound, music and technology. He is the author of <em>Sounding Out the City. Personal Stereos and the Management of Everyday Life</em> (Berg 2000), <em>Sound Moves:iPod Culture and Urban Experience</em> (Routledge 2007) and is co-editor of <em>The Auditory Culture Reader</em> (Berg 2003). He is also the founding editor of <em>The Senses and Society Journal</em> published by Berg. He was until recently a consultant to Portalplayer, California and is a core member of New Trends Forum, a European Thinktank funded by Bankinter, Spain.
