A life in pods.(Essay)

"You push a button. You count to thirty. You have a sensational cup of coffee, as fresh as it is frothy." So says the instruction sheet for my new coffeemaker, a gift from my husband, who, it might be noted, has never been a coffee drinker. When questioned about the gift, he confesses to having picked it up for free at some promotional event at the mall. Upon reading the fine print, I understand why the company is giving the machines away: "Our coffee pods are specially designed and pre-measured with our coffee blends. One pod makes one sensational cup of coffee:' It's not the machine they make the money on: it's the pod.

Because I am not averse to the occasional new experience, I decide to give the machine a whirl. As promised, there is no labor and mess involved. All I have to do is add the water, drop in the pod, and wait. Within thirty seconds, the coffee is dispensed directly into the cup, not unlike those vending machines one finds at auto body shops and in the lobbies of highway motels. If I were making a cup of coffee by the antiquated method to which I've become accustomed, I'd still be measuring the beans at this point.

But already, I am disappointed. I miss the rough texture and heady fragrance of the beans, the noisy whir of the grinder, the slow gurgle of water making its way through the filter basket. I take a sip and am unsurprised to find that the prepackaged concoction, Vanilla Bistro, resembles the instant coffee I subsisted on in college. Instead of the complex, layered flavors of a well-roasted coffee bean, there is a cloying chemical taste, sugary but not truly sweet, with a vanilla-ish tang that is to real vanilla what a McDonald's apple turnover is to a homemade apple pie.

I recently spotted one of my graduate students outside the university where I teach, sitting alone on the stoop, eyes closed, head tilted to the side. A thin white cord stretched from each ear to her open palm, on which rested a rectangular white disk, narrower than a business card and not much thicker, bearing the telltale pome. I half expected to see a professional camera crew rounding the corner, for Apple could not have designed a finer advertisement for the iPod shuffle. Or rather, Apple had designed this image almost verbatim (it towers over 101 on a billboard drivers can't…