Confessions of a Pandora Addict

A few weeks ago, I was in the computer cluster here at Syracuse University and the worst thing happened in the middle of creating a ERD. my ipod died. Upon realizing I was a bit frustrated at this situation, my friend turned to me and said "Alana, have you tried Pandora?"

Being the geeky person that I am, my thoughts turned to Greek mythology and Pandora's role as the keeper of the world's evils... and of course that she was the first woman created by Zeus, and gifted by all of the gods (I guess you could call her the Greek's "Eve") and she was also considered to be something "beautifully evil" hummm...

Anyway, thinking this about Pandora, the last thing on my mind was music. So of course, I was fascinated, not only by the concept of this (commercial) free Internet radio, but why the name "Pandora?"

So after analyzing it, I thought of a few answers before I went on the site to find the "real answer" :

• Music isn't evil, unless you think of some of the songs on pop radio, such as Britney Spears' "Gimme More." Then it's evil. So one assumption in this post is that most music is not evil, so this is not the answer where I want to place my faith.
  
• According to the myth, Pandora opened the box of evil, but kept Hope inside. The name "Pandora" could mean, simply, that there is always hope. Not just hope for music, but hope that there will always be new music.
  
• I read that Pandora is based off of the Music Geonome Project- where songs have been analyzed, categorized & "ized" in many ways.. therefore linking songs to different consumer preferences. Seriously, I would love to get ahold of the data this site gets. I hope they make a lot of money selling it. So I'm thinking it might be that their huge database...er..."box" of music data has been "opened" for everyone. I kindof like this conclusion.
  

drumroll, please....

and according to the Pandora website, the real reason for the name is:

"The name Pandora means "all gifted" in Greek. In ancient Greek mythology, Pandora received many gifts from the Gods, including the gift of music, from Apollo. She was also, as we all know, very curious. Unlike those Gods of old, however, we celebrate that virtue and have made it our mission to reward the musically curious among us with a never-ending experience of music discovery."

hummm... I guess I was kindof close. I'm just glad they left out the whole woman is evil part. Thanks Pandora.