Between the Speakers
Oct. 7th, 2005 08:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaOkay, this has been kicking around for a while. I'm torn between trying to make an actual persuasive essay out of it, or just kick it around in the open. I suspect I will get more interaction if I do the latter, so here goes.
One of the things that happened - and I knew this was going to happen, but I didn't see a good way of stopping it - when the Spouse got his computer and I inherited "our" machine was that both of us started spending a lot of time with our own pair of headphones on, so we wouldn't get noise interference. I've also spent a fair amount of time in public listening to the iShuffle recently. Most of all, though, I've worked with teenagers for the past five-and-a-half years, in a population where a huge number of them wear their headphones everywhere someone doesn't specifically tell them to take them off.
I've come to the conclusion that there's something inherently antisocial about headphones. I realize that this is, on the face of it, obvious, but bear with me for a minute, because I mean something a little deeper than just "I can't hear you, I have the Beastie Boys turned up to 11."
I used to get griped at a lot for reading in public. At one point, my own sister started yelling at me that I was "always reading, all the time! You're always reading instead of helping!" (I hadn't been aware at the time that she needed helping with anything, as she hadn't asked me.) And, indeed, reading is an inherently solitary pastime. People who are voracious readers are often introverted to begin with, and a lot of people who became involved in reading a lot of fiction or history as children or early adolescents often describe it as an "escape." It's very difficult to really interact with anyone else while you're reading, unless the reading is itself the interaction, as when you're reading out loud to a child or your spouse.
I find myself in much the same headspace when I'm listening to music on a pair of headphones. The round of what I can and can't do while a stream of rhythm and melody is being piped directly into my ears is slightly different - I can type while listening to music, for example, and I can't type while I'm reading unless I'm copying the matter directly - but, overall, it puts me in-myself rather than interfacing-with-the-world. In fact, I find it difficult to speak unless (as with typing what I'm reading) I'm singing or reciting the lyrics. And a CD player and headphones are accessible to people who read very slowly (or who can barely read at all) in a way that the absorbing otherworld of books is not.
I'm also guessing, from the reactions of students, that this is true for most auditory and kinesthetic learners. Piping music directly into one's skull locates one's awareness there, or at least in one's body. It makes it very difficult to interact with the other people in your environment, except in a very limited way.
Normally, this isn't that big a deal, I suppose. But it means that one ignores the people in one's environment while one is doing this. I've seen entire busloads of people who were all absorbed in their own elsewheres, either through headphones or though books. Okay, that's traditional on public transportation, but is it healthy in a family? Among friends? I've seen students do this while "hanging out," too. It seems like it has the potential to be potentially very isolating.
This won't do for the extroverts, of course. But then there's a second gadget that does the same thing, except now there's a person on the other end, not a recording, so it somehow counts as interaction - the cell phone. It still completely detaches the person from their environment; that's one of the reasons (above and beyond merely occupying a hand) that they're dangerous to drive with. Instead of dwelling in your own skull alone, now you have the disembodied voice of one other person in your head with you - but you've still shut out your entire immediate environment.
Granted, headphones and telephones have been around for a while, but only recently have they both been easily portable in a way that wasn't cumbersome or obviously intrusive. I worry about the culture of self-absorption that the technology is making available.
At least we still have the visual learners to save us, right? (At least until we get portable VR goggles.)
One of the things that happened - and I knew this was going to happen, but I didn't see a good way of stopping it - when the Spouse got his computer and I inherited "our" machine was that both of us started spending a lot of time with our own pair of headphones on, so we wouldn't get noise interference. I've also spent a fair amount of time in public listening to the iShuffle recently. Most of all, though, I've worked with teenagers for the past five-and-a-half years, in a population where a huge number of them wear their headphones everywhere someone doesn't specifically tell them to take them off.
I've come to the conclusion that there's something inherently antisocial about headphones. I realize that this is, on the face of it, obvious, but bear with me for a minute, because I mean something a little deeper than just "I can't hear you, I have the Beastie Boys turned up to 11."
I used to get griped at a lot for reading in public. At one point, my own sister started yelling at me that I was "always reading, all the time! You're always reading instead of helping!" (I hadn't been aware at the time that she needed helping with anything, as she hadn't asked me.) And, indeed, reading is an inherently solitary pastime. People who are voracious readers are often introverted to begin with, and a lot of people who became involved in reading a lot of fiction or history as children or early adolescents often describe it as an "escape." It's very difficult to really interact with anyone else while you're reading, unless the reading is itself the interaction, as when you're reading out loud to a child or your spouse.
I find myself in much the same headspace when I'm listening to music on a pair of headphones. The round of what I can and can't do while a stream of rhythm and melody is being piped directly into my ears is slightly different - I can type while listening to music, for example, and I can't type while I'm reading unless I'm copying the matter directly - but, overall, it puts me in-myself rather than interfacing-with-the-world. In fact, I find it difficult to speak unless (as with typing what I'm reading) I'm singing or reciting the lyrics. And a CD player and headphones are accessible to people who read very slowly (or who can barely read at all) in a way that the absorbing otherworld of books is not.
I'm also guessing, from the reactions of students, that this is true for most auditory and kinesthetic learners. Piping music directly into one's skull locates one's awareness there, or at least in one's body. It makes it very difficult to interact with the other people in your environment, except in a very limited way.
Normally, this isn't that big a deal, I suppose. But it means that one ignores the people in one's environment while one is doing this. I've seen entire busloads of people who were all absorbed in their own elsewheres, either through headphones or though books. Okay, that's traditional on public transportation, but is it healthy in a family? Among friends? I've seen students do this while "hanging out," too. It seems like it has the potential to be potentially very isolating.
This won't do for the extroverts, of course. But then there's a second gadget that does the same thing, except now there's a person on the other end, not a recording, so it somehow counts as interaction - the cell phone. It still completely detaches the person from their environment; that's one of the reasons (above and beyond merely occupying a hand) that they're dangerous to drive with. Instead of dwelling in your own skull alone, now you have the disembodied voice of one other person in your head with you - but you've still shut out your entire immediate environment.
Granted, headphones and telephones have been around for a while, but only recently have they both been easily portable in a way that wasn't cumbersome or obviously intrusive. I worry about the culture of self-absorption that the technology is making available.
At least we still have the visual learners to save us, right? (At least until we get portable VR goggles.)
