My iPod is my constant companion. It gives me hours of faithful service, assuming I remember to charge it up. Thanks to the podcasting phenomenon, I can learn about any subject, even Russian. Mine happens to hold my entire music collection and according to the little bar at the bottom of my iTunes window, it's just over half full.

I bought the iPod as a gift to myself last fall. I was about to graduate from college and had landed my first professional job. Okay, it's just a part-time gig that came along with an internship, but it's in radio, and I'm optimistic that it'll turn into a real job with benefits and everything.

I could wax rhapsodic (hee!) about my iPod for hours. I could talk about the "MOM'S toy" etched into the back. I could talk about the video screen. I could talk about the hours and hours and hours of entertainment at my fingertips. But I won't.

The reason why is because it seems everyone has one. This afternoon at school, it seemed everyone walking past me had those white earbuds. I'm sure the squirrels on campus have them, too, but I'm not sure how they'd get into the computer labs to download music, but if they could get in, I'm sure they'd listen to the Squirrel Nut Zippers. (I slay me.)

And, of course, there's lawsuit pending about the noise levels these things deliver. They are pretty loud; if I've got my studio headphones plugged in, I can't hear myself think if the volume's set much more than half. I prefer it that way, although the voices in my head disagree. They claim the iPod has been detrimental to their efforts to communicate with me.

The reason I've been thinking about this is because all those people who answered the siren call of the white earbuds remind me of the Walkmen of my youth. (Walkmans? Walkpeople?) Back in the day, everyone had the black headphones on. The usual mavens whined about the excessive personal space people made for themselves. I agree, it's hard to strike up small talk on the bus with someone who's listening to a Tom Clancy book on tape. Of course, who wouldn't want to engage in casual coversation with a guy who smells like he hasn't bathed since the Carter administration and who thinks you're purty. In the 1980s, we were all dancing to the beat of our own drummer, or at least, to the beat of Madonna's drummer.

But the Walkman is so 20 years ago. Thanks to the iPod, we can still ignore the unpleasantness of the world around us and we can continue to go deaf in the process. Who needs self-amusement skills when we can simply plug in and watch all of Season One of Drawn Together or Desperate Housewives?

The real question is this, and I await more whining from the usual suspects: Are we so starved for entertainment that we must spend hundreds of dollars to take it with us? In an age when we can access the Internet from our cell phones, do we really need constant musical and video entertainment? Are we all so alienated from each other that a small box the size of half a deck of cards seems like a good alternative to conversation?

If you were around 20 years ago, the answer is "yes".