**I believe we have let ourselves; or have evolved ourselves into letting us ignore the world and reduce social interaction in a variety of ways. This will talk about your iPod. We ignore people by secluding ourselves into our iPods and the music it holds. This is most relevant when you are walking around town, on transit, or in the general public. Not when you are jamming with it in your bed.
I feel there is a social gap or an empty space between you and your fellow people. We walk past strangers on the street, we share elevators with them, we buy groceries together; technically we share many things together. Yet everything still feels so disconnected.
Perhaps we feel this disconnect from the rest of society at times, because of your iPod. I don’t think that the iPod is some evil device that was created to disconnect the world. I know it’s just a music player and it plays music and it’s great. But, it has also surgically replaced those awkward silences that used to force us to interact.
I believe there was a time when you had to fill awkward silences on elevators and transit or standing in line at the grocery store by talking or interacting with the people you shared it with.
Now, sharing an elevator (or any other public interaction) with someone and your iPod is in (or they have their iPod in) has become a socially acceptable way to ignore them. The iPod creates an invisible barrier around us when we are out in public. “I am listening to my music; therefore I do not have to speak to anyone…but not only that…people won’t come up to me and talk to me”. When you have your headphones in you create an invisible bubble around you. You have created your invisible shield, your invisible safe place. Final result is your pod. The iPod.
Even sometimes we hear people talking to us, asking us a question, or a homeless man asks for change; but since you have your iPod in, you assume if you ignore them it will be socially acceptable to do so and it is.
Now, throw in the fact that you can change and control what type of music you are listening to, and therefore adjust, change, and control the mood you want to be in…we have an unbreakable force of a technology induced social buffer. The Pod.
PS: Have you ever had a conversation with someone who (did have their iPod in when you approached them) and they leave 1 in their ear? Thank you.
I think that headphones have become the way a lot of us micro-manage our encounters because we are socially overwhelmed. We are constantly bombarded with information, people, increasing economic stratification and a landslide of social nuances, implications, conflicts, etc. Time spent in transit can be transformed into a modern brand of "alone time" just by listening to music on headphones, and I don't think that's a problem in itself, considering how much more people need to decompress these days.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that we have never solved the issue of how much our industrialized civilization alienates people from themselves and each other. We still fail to see how destructive our consumer culture is to us, our environment and our communities. We are just a bunch of animals jumping in our cages in the zoo, howling and chattering furiously, somehow unable to see that we have been captured and locked up. It's positively wild.
Ipods have certainly changed social settings at parties! We have become so spoilt from having access to our favorite tracks anywhere and at all times, that nobody wants to share anybody elses music at a party. Will we become so obsessive over the control of our music that parties will no longer have music and we will just party along with one ear plugged into the ipod? Will anybody ever sing or play a guitar at a party ever again? Maybe we will just have to wait for the u&ipod to be invented?
ReplyDeleteOr party with open-mindeds, eclectics and musicians! :^D
ReplyDeleteboth valid points. i love it and agree :P
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