This short book examines the iPod and other portable media technologies as vehicles for critical inquiry into American culture. It looks at their utility in understanding technological design and shaping it for democratic and socially just ends, and also their relevance to perceiving "ourselves" culturally, a crucial dimension of sound global citizenship. The book begins in the tradition of Horace Miner's classic by examing the "d'Opi" ' a remote island community that has developed an intricate complex of beliefs, exchange practices, ornamentation, and trance-like rituals built around a single large shipment of artifacts washed upon its shores from distant, more technologically "advanced" societies.