When did "our stuff" become "my stuff"?

I was sitting on the bus last night and had time to ponder the meaning of the iPod. I bought one two years ago, and it has partly been treated as a "family" possession, not an individual possession. The thing is, that isn't really working. Because no one really owns it, it doesn't get used as often as I thought it would. That's mainly because you can't set it up to just play the stuff that you like, and avoid all the stuff that the kids like.

Yes, you can setup playlists, and you could have a playlist for each family member, but I like to play my stuff in random order. You cannot select a playlist and then have the contents played randomly (unless someone comes up with a hack for the iPod that does just that).

I suspect that is a deliberate design feature that Steve Jobs insisted on. He's a smart guy, and one way to sell more iPods is te ensure that they are not treated as communal property.

So much of our stuff used to be communal property - mainly because it was so expensive in comparison to our incomes. A measure of how rich we have become is the number of items that have shifted from communal use to individual ownership.

The phone is the most obvious example. When I was growing up, a household had one landline and perhaps only one handset in the house, and certainly only one number. It was shared between all members of the family, and the phone was normally placed out in an open spot in the house where everyone could access it equally. The hallway seemed to be a favourite spot - hence the popularity of small sideboards to hold the phone and drawers to hold the phone books.

Then came the idea of putting in multiple extensions, so that phone conversations were no longer public. Family members could retreat into the study or bedroom for a chat. Wireless was simply an extension of that idea, although all it really led to in my opinion was a lot of lost handsets.

Then came the ability to have multiple phone numbers in the one house, so that everyone could have their own line and own number. I don't think this ever really took off in Australia, but it seems to be a feature of every US teen movie. When we had just one phone line but multiple extensions, you still had to share the phone (and occasionally fight for it with brothers and sisters). Getting your own line took away even that basic interaction with other family members. Kids could suddenly retreat to their room and never emerge, but still interact with all their friends.

Mobile phones took that a step further. I don't think they ever went through a "communal" stage in the West. People bought them for themselves and never thought of sharing them. I still get a bit freaked when someone asks to use my phone - not that I am worried about bugs or anything, but it's a bit like being asked to share my toothbrush or my underwear. Psychologically, it is not an item to be shared.

The fascinating thing though is that phone conversations went through a period of "going private" - that is, people retreating to a separate room to talk - and now they have gone "horribly public" - with people bellowing very private things into mobile phones in full view of a train load of passengers. I hear things on the bus every week that I just don't want to know about.

Which is why I was thinking of an iPod. I was reading a bit of advice from an agony aunt, where a reader asked what he could do when stuck in a train carriage full of people yapping into their phones. She suggested getting a set of noise cancelling headphones and wearing them - using the iPod to listen to music being completely optional. I thought that if I am going to wear headphones on the bus, I might as well listen to something.

Which is how I connected the personalisation of iPods and mobile phones. I suddenly understood that trying to treat our iPod as family property went against the grain of the product, and should be avoided. It simply doesn't work that way.

I have to go shopping now. I am content now that I have a zen-like understanding of consumer items.