February 6, 2005
Audio Cocoons
Couros Blog - Frequent Rants from an Ed. Tech'er: The Evolution of Personal Audio
Alec points to the article "Bring the Noise: The Evolution of Portable Audio" as an interesting summary of the history of audio devices. I agree with his summary of the article but, as usual, it sparked a different train of thought for me.
On a recent trip to Chicago I marveled at the fact that nearly everyone on the streets of the city seemed to have the telltale signs of some form of audio device: earbuds or headphones. In a big city, the ability to enjoy music and eliminate the noise of traffic and other people is certainly a benefit that probably provides a certain measure of stress relief.
A recent stroll through the much smaller streets of my current hometown: Bloomington, IN yielded a similar picture. In a hip college town, groovin' with the latest technology is to be expected, right? The aspect to this that began to disturb me, however, was when I was in a local music store browsing some used CDs (yes, old-fashioned CDs) and a young man was clearly jamming to some tunes and lost in his own audio cocoon. He picked out a CD and went to the counter, still slightly gyrating his head to his music, paid for his purchase and left the store without once turning down his music or speaking to the clerk.
I have since seen this occurring more and more as if the audio cocoon is a way of excusing a lack of interaction with other people. Music has the ability to unify us with other like-minded individuals, especially with all of the digital sharing options that are now available but I have to wonder about what we lose when we tune out the rest of the world? Do we lose a sense of what it means to be in the city or interact with a clerk at the store? Is there something wrong with this?
I am not bemoaning the move to new technology or these young whipper-snappers and their new-fangled gadgets (being quite the gadget addict myself), it is more of an observation and open question on how we interface with the world given the opportunities to filter our experiences through these new digital lenses.
Posted by Rovy at February 6, 2005 7:35 AM