The Illusion of Control

Our uncertain future of self-curation

I have a recurring nightmare in which all of my Spotify playlists have been deleted.

As someone who’s been fanatic about recorded music since he could request CD singles for his 9th birthday, this makes some semblance of sense. Music fans of my generation have witnessed more seismic changes to formats — in less time — than any before us. It took about twenty years for society to move from tapes to CDs, but only half of that for us to go through mp3 players, Napster, iPods, iTunes and streaming services.

Growing up, our family’s electronics drawer was filled with rapidly obsolete music delivery models; Walkmans, Mini-Discs, Rhapsody players, SanDisks and multiple generation of iPods classic, mini and shuffle. Don’t even get me started on phones. We leapt between technology with literal abandon.

With every new device comes a new way of organising and categorising what’s important to us. We build up collections, either physically or digitally, only for them to be rendered obsolete in increasingly shorter windows of time. I am about to trade in my teenage car, which I’ve somehow held onto for 16 years. With it will go a lovingly curated and alphabetised mass of CDs that will no longer be playable on anything I own.