An iPod For The Queen? A Perfect Gift, Mr. President

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on April 01

Wags in Britain are up in arms about the gift that President Obama, in London for the G20 summit, has given to Queen Elizabeth II: An iPod loaded with video and photographs of her 2007 visit to Richmond, Virginia.

The Drudge Report is giving the gift the snarky headline treatment: “Gift to the Queen: An iPod [And She Already Has One]” implying somehow that perhaps this wasn’t a gift worthy of a queen. It’s not clear from the stories I’ve read so far exactly which model of iPod was given. It would seem that either an iPod classic or an iPod touch would seem the most likely candidates. Her Majesty already has a 2005-vintage iPod Mini.

There will be much thought given to what this gift actually symbolizes. One line of argument goes that consumer electronics, no matter how beautifully designed, are a sort of common gift, and therefor unsuitable for someone so uncommon as a queen. (He also gave her a rare songbook signed by Richard Rodgers. Nothing common about that, as Rodgers is considered the world over to be musical royalty.) Her gift to the President: A framed photograph of herself and the Duke of Edinburgh, the standard gift for these visits.

This of course comes on the heels of another gift from Obama to Prime Minister Gordon Brown: A batch of classic American movies on DVD, which, it was revealed, were coded to Region 1 — North America — and therefore unplayable on unmodified DVD players in the UK, aka DVD Region 2.

Brown’s gift to Obama, as the Boston Globe notes, was an ornamental pen holder made from the timbers of the Victorian anti-slave ship HMS Gannett, and which was for a time known as HMS President. A fine symbolic gift, indeed.

In light of that, let’s reconsider Obama’s gift to the Queen in the context of the times in which we’re living. First, the content of the iPod itself. The Queen’s visit to Richmond was a rather momentous one. She came to honor the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown Colony, which was the first permanent English settlement in what was to become the United States. And Virginia, you’ll remember, was so named by Sir Walter Raleigh in honor of Queen Elizabeth I, who was supposedly a “virgin queen”.

I think something that commemorates the Queen’s visit, and which addresses the importance it held in the minds of the American people, is perfectly appropriate and symbolic of the relationship between our two countries. Americans thought her visit here was a big deal, and so a gift showing how much the nation appreciated it makes perfect sense.

The President might have presented the Queen with a handsome book of photographs and writings documenting her visit, and a DVD of video footage (this one, ahem, properly region-coded). This would have been a perfectly suitable gift, a way of saying “Your last visit really meant something to us,” but would have garnered no headlines. The fact that the same content is being conveyed in an iPod is what’s getting the attention, and all those stodgy British harrumphs.

Update: Jake Tapper at ABCNews goes into precise detail over exactly what was on the iPod given here.

So now let’s tackle the iPod. What is it, exactly? A uniquely American item, a symbol of American innovation, ingenuity, creativity, design sensibilities, and also of American culture in the early 21st Century. I challenge you to point to one thing other than the Internet itself that has had so broad-sweeping a cultural and economic impact in the US in so short a time. TV, radio and the personal computer all took longer to have their respect impacts. (Last year I argued for the iPod’s long-term cultural impact here.)

Thanks to the iPod, we consume music, video and, more recently, written words in a manner differently than ever before. Practically no form of media has been untouched by its existence. In fact, the Queen started making her annual Christmas address on YouTube before our current president started making his weekly addresses to the nation in the same place. The Queen’s speeches have also been available as podcasts, though it now appears that the podcast format has been supplanted by YouTube video. And while the Queen may not be so savvy on new media’s bleeding edge — she doesn’t yet have a Twitter account, although British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the UK Parliament are on Twitter — she and the institution of the monarchy are not exactly behind the times, either.

This week I changed my morning routine and first read not the three newspapers that arrive at my door each day, but newspaper content from the Web browser of an iPod touch. I then used it to listen to a radio news broadcast, and then to check my email. The night before, I used it to watch a TV program before falling asleep. My life, and that of millions of others, is different now with an iPod. For this I think the iPod in its various incarnations will be remembered as a defining artifact of the first decade of the 21st century, in a way that radio represents the 1930s and 40s, TV the 50s and 60s, powered flight the 1910s and 20s, and so on. No object more perfectly represents everything that’s good about America at this moment in history.

Moreover, this president loves technology and sees it as a part of the solution to the various difficulties in which we find ourselves. Among the qualities that will help us solve our problems as a nation and a world are ingenuity, creativity, innovative thinking, and no small amount of creative destruction. The iPod is emblematic of all these things and more. It was, after all, during the early stages of another recession that the first iPod emerged. Technology — a lot of it American-invented technology — properly and thoughtfully applied will play a central role in helping the entire world solve a lot of important problems. While the iPod may not save the world, American innovation, which Apple’s iPod so eloquently represents, most certainly will.

With so simple a gift as an iPod he’s expressed America’s appreciation for the Queen, for the United Kingdom, but also made an important statement of his philosophy as president: That technology isn’t just about entertainment but about solving real problems. The president has, I think, given the Queen the perfect gift.

Update: As Robert Brown points out in the comments, there is another British connection: the iPod was designed by Jonathan Ive, a native of Britain whom The Queen herself awarded with the title Commander of the Most Excellent of the British Empire, suggesting that an iPod carries even more symbolism of cross-Atlantic cooperation. Peter Burrows noted the award in his 2006 profile of Ive here.

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