Feb 15 2007
I Like My Isolation
The conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan once grumpily lamented the rise of “the iPod people.” Walking down a New York street in February 2005, Sullivan saw each person “in his own musical world, walking to their soundtrack, stars in their own music video, almost oblivious to the world around them.” Even as he copped to owning an iPod of his own—one of 67 million sold since its debut in 2001—Sullivan saw civilization crumbling in the friendly, well-designed face of the little Apple digital music player.
In blogging his horror, Sullivan joins a long line of worrywarts who have fretted about the cultural and political impact of portable music. But in The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness (Simon & Schuster), technology reporter Steven Levy argues that the ability to check out of the public sphere is one of the many virtues of Steve Jobs’ minuscule machine. As the sociologist Rey Chow said of the iPod’s predecessor, the Sony Walkman: “This is the freedom to be deaf to the loudspeakers of history. The Walkman allows me…to be a missing part of history.”
I have heard this argument so many times that it makes me want to blow my brains out. Why are people so obsessed with the “interactions” that we aren’t having with each other? Frankly, before I had an iPod, I still didn’t “interact” with other people on the subway. In fact, the last thing I want to do with anyone on the subway is chat, talk, or hear their opinion on global warming or the war in Iraq.
Seriously.
People make it sound like before iPods and other portable electronic devices were introduced, everyone loved each other and gathered ’round a campfire on a subway platform singing kumbaya. People, get real.
I love my iPod. It lets me tune these idiots out. I don’t have to hear some stupid Puerto Rican chick next to me talking about how her “papi” banged her so hard that her head banged into the headboard so many times that she has a headache. I don’t have to hear the clicking of a nailclipper cutting some savage’s nails and leaving little crescent shaped fingernails all over the floor. I don’t have to hear really loud spanish phonetalker guy.
None of it.
I just get absorbed in my iPod.
And it makes me happy because it gets all those annoyances out of my life and clears my path to sanity.
Pardon me if I don’t pine for the days when I have to hear all that crap again.
March 23rd, 2007 at 3:20 pm
dustbury.com
Just back away slowly…
Oh, that horrible iPod: iPods invariably separate humanity and limit human interaction. And this is part of a common trend, for as we hide behind computer screens or cell phones in the guise of text messages, we are constraining ourselves……
September 13th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
[...] Not that there’s anything wrong with that: Why are people so obsessed with the “interactions” that we aren’t having with each other? Frankly, before I had an iPod, I still didn’t “interact” with other people on the subway. In fact, the last thing I want to do with anyone on the subway is chat, talk, or hear their opinion on global warming or the war in Iraq. Seriously. People make it sound like before iPods and other portable electronic devices were introduced, everyone loved each other and gathered ’round a campfire on a subway platform singing Kumbaya. People, get real. [...]