Can popular music ever truly be unplugged?

Without a doubt, technology shapes the music which we listen to and are exposed to, as Paul Theberge recognised in 2001, when he said that "without electric technology, popular music in the 21st century is unthinkable." This is true, as without technology, there would no such thing as popular music, just music made up from singing and non-amplified instruments.

Without the technology we have, popular music simply could not exist, due to the lack of promotion, recording and, also the ability to play concerts would be lost because of the technology required to amplify and play to a large crowd. 

This leads to the popular MTV Unplugged specials actually not being unplugged because of the microphones and recording technology used, rather than just being wrongly thought of as 'unplugged' due to the acoustic instruments used. It could also be argued that the famous house gigs that The Libertines hosted were unplugged, however the internet promotion for the gig overrides this fact.