Slashdot Mirror
The Psychology Behind Headphones
pvt_medic writes "The BBC has an interesting article today about portable music players and personal space. The article is on the research that Dr Michael Bull has done on portable music players. He analyzes them as a "tool whereby users manage space, time and the boundaries around the self." This article goes on to analyze the social and psychological aspects related to listening to music in public with headphones. A good quick read for those who do this."
Some women use earphones to deflect unwanted attention, finding it easier to avoid responding because they look already occupied.
People in general do this. I work at a technical college and see numerous students with headphones on (I don't believe I have seen earbuds recently). I see absolutely no reason for people to be listening to music while in any sort of educational institution. I would guess that would be the equivalent of someone's body languge -- showing crossed arms during a conversation.
I think that people are shy enough as it is. We do very little REAL social interaction as it is. Do we really want to become even more anti-social creatures by promoting music as some sort of "shield" from the outside world? Remember, the average person spends about 50% of their daily free time at home watching TV.
Music is something I like to enjoy with others at concerts and at home. Music is something that should be passed on to others. Nothing like finding a new genre of music you have never heard before because a friend had it playing in the car or in his house.
Just my worthless ramblings,
Dr. Michael Bull was written up in Wired magazine, too, and Slashdot carried that story last month. Here it is.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Wired ran an article on this guy a couple of weeks ago. So, if you wondering why this sounds familiar, now you know.
Some of us have to use headphones, as our music of choice violates obsenity laws and may damage small buildings...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
...because the programmer over the cube wall was constantly humming songs to herself. There's nothing more maddening than listening to someone hum while you're trying to code. Headphones were mandatory.
I dropped the headphones when I got an office. What a blessing.
I carry an MD player with me anywhere; I use it not just for music that suits my mood or for entertainment (life is more fun with its own soundtrack, don't you think?) but also to basically provide an excuse to ignore people (panhandlers, sidewalk vendors, ex-girlfriends...just kidding about the sidewalk vendors) that I don't want to interact with. But I never realized before that when I see someone else with headphones on, I've got this subconscious awareness of a kind of bubble around them which filters out certain kinds of interaction. I'd never think of asking a question or making small talk.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
He analyzes them as a "tool whereby users manage space, time and the boundaries around the self."
Or could it be that they just want to listen to music?
Nah....
I wish I had more opportunity to do this at work. Being able to separate yourself and focus on your work without being distracted it a heaven-sent.
Alas, I'm on a helpdesk. That doesn't work out too well.
thelikesofwhich.com
I don't see any empirical results. Have any experiments that he's done been reproduced? What are his methodologies.
Sounds like junk-science to me. The guy has a hypothesis. That's about it.
Here's my hypothesis: "Music sounds good. Noise sounds bad." Can someone write up an article on my thoughts? TIA.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
... or they can crank up the volume and slowly lose their hearing because the sounds are so much louder since they are right next to the ear drum.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
So maybe manufacturers should start advertising in units of personal space instead of the rounded down GB.
Are you Corn Fed?
The University of Stating the Bleedin' Obvious ?
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Most studies sole purpose is to validate the career of the person doing the study. Any useful results are incidental.
"programmers use variables to store, identify, and recover data. news at 11"
-ninjaneer
Because it keeps me amused in study hall. ;)
Seriously, though...this shows how much we've advanced. 100 years ago, you had to go out of your way to learn an insturment (such as a fiddle) to have music at all. Now, people have an mp3 player filled with any music they want on a whim. People can be listening to their own sort of "theme song" when they're in a certain mood. If you're bored and can't just go away (like my study hall plight), you can just flip on a song that reminds you of something that's happened or you want to happen, and slip away. It's a nice thing to be able to do.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
Wasn't the original walkman to shield the wearer from unwanted sound?
I know I need to use my headphones at work to shield myself from the disturbing noises from the nearby cubicles. Pointy hair people blabbing about pointless things, people clipping finger nails, eating, etc.
and so are personal stereos, where I work. Something about 'not being conductive to the work environment'. The problem is that there is so much racket from people around me talking on the phone, chatting, etc. that you NEED headphones (or something to block out the noise) sometimes to concentrate on the task at hand.
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
The whole reason humanity left africa and then spread out across the entire planet, is because most people would prefer to be left alone. We all want, for the most part, our own 100 acre plots of land.
This is my sig.
I thought that was what my Tardis was for.
In some (or many?) places it is illegal to ride a bicycle with earphones on. Is there a safe and legal alternative besides fixating an open air personal stereo to your handlebars? I'd love to listen to music while I cycle.
I got tinitus (constant ringing for my ears) from too much heavy metal with headphones. So, be warned, it's not really worth it when you are home (I'm talking about people who use headphones in front of the computer).
on the street is when I have my headphones on. They don't care. I can be in a crowd of people and they still come to me - they guy with the headphones on to ask directions, for a cigarette, for money.
Don't these people know headphones mean Leave me alone!?
would be an analysis of how ivory-tower eggheads over-analyze ever goddamned little thing in a futile attempt to make themselves seem relevant and get one paper closer to that all-important tenure.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Space-Time Continuum
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Now if only we could force all in car stereo systems to be headphone only.
No more will I be woken at 6am by jonny patel parking his Ford Escort outside my house playing bangra at volume 11.
btw www.advancedmp3players.co.uk has some extremely sexy personal space management kit.
Worst
is, do these same findings apply to those of us who walk around with a very large, heavy boombox on one shoulder? I would think that it should apply more since we're not only reclaiming our own space, but also the space of all of those around us...
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
Maybe we need a wearable version of those hotel 'do not disturb' signs. It would fit around your neck and display your request that you be left alone on your chest for all to see. It would also be reversible so you can let everyone know when you want your bed linens changed.
I read about this research last week and found it interesting -- so I emailed the good doctor and offered to participate. It took about 45 minutes to complete the survey that he sent, and the questions posed were, IMHO, very insightful. It made me realize just how much this simple device, the iPod, has changed how I listen to music and how I interact with the general public.
007's "The Living Daylights" showed us that you can also use headphones to strangle people. With a side bonus of looking cool while you do it.
I never felt comfortable wearing phones with music playing since to do so removes one of the most important means of gathering information about your environment. I grew up in ST Louis Mo, a place that in the 60's was VERY dangerous for guys (or 14 yr olds like me) with long hair, and then 20 years in the Lower East Side in NYC. The idea of dampening the input of sound as a 'shield' is silly. "Oh no! The headphone-forcefield!!! I can't break through it!" Gimme a break, you're just scared to say "NO" to someone or relate to people who are 'different' from you and hope that music will protect you from the terrible world around you (which you obviously DON"T want to touch).
I call computer-illiteracy job security
a way to separate all the ungodly noise in the "standard" stupid cube-ville environments where employees are expected to produce 60+ hours worth of creative productivity a week, while in an environment that can sometimes be as loud as a factory floor.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I didn't know iPods could manage Space-Time. I guess that deserves the higher price.
There are wars, peace, prosperity, population, mad nature, weather, songs and humanity, and its all on my iPod. It is its own entire little universe, and whenver I press Play I get to experience it all, on my own, by myself, in a way which nobody else can. (Like real life...)
I can change it every few months, as well. iPod_010104.dmg is a 5gig file among many others
Without personal music, I most definitely would've gone crazy by now.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
(I DON'T know why, but these people find me on any public transport! Do I have a friggin' stamp on my forehead stating "freaks welcome"???)
Using my walkman (or even wearing headphones with the walkman turned off) helps me cast an "anti-freak" personal wall...
...hmm... sounds like a new Angband spell! ;-)
I bet you the next article by the same author will be: "Water: It's wet" , sheesh!
So what about people who never wear head phones, nor have any desire to?
I think I never wear them because I don't like not knowing what's going on around me.
I do find headphones tend to keep most of the riff-raff at bay. Similarly, I learned in college that in order to walk through the main 'square' of campus, it was advisable to be carrying things in both hands in order to avoid being flier-ed to death by eager student groups. Headphones, a cup of coffee, and a bag, along with that glazed-over 'I'm not here right now' look tend to work and keep the tree-killers at a loss, waving their fistfulls of fliers helplessly.
Amor omnia vincit. Occasionally.
I use music as a way to focus my attention on the task at hand. Music seems to help me by gving my brain a timeing signal that I seem to lack.
I was given special permisson to listne to music in class 'cus my teachers had noticed that I was 10 time more productive when i had something to listen too.
I had this argument only this morning with a colleague. He shouts across the office to another colleague and has ongoing conversations with the other chap at the top of his voice.
When I asked him if he could have that conversation over IM he told me to stick my fingers in my ears or to listen to music.
The problem is that I refuse to listen to music *because* that inconsiderate prick has the manners of a five year old.
I listen to music when I know I'll be able to appreciate it fully, not as a means of protection. In the best of cases, I'm unable to concentrate on work when I have music playing : I love my tunes so much that I generally need to be able to dive into them fully. Impossible to concentrate on work when I have some lush tunes in my ears.
I guess it's really just my problem seeing how all the other people here at work are OK with wearing earphones all day in order to keep the twit's shrill nasal voice our of their heads.
Bummer.
I really don't mind if people stand by and overhear what I am listening to if they're really that interested in my tastes, but I know that not everyone will want to listen to my own music (or "noise"). I know I'm not comfortable at all about listening to someone else's music thumping through my head unwillingly, whether in public or at home, as I find it not only distracting to my work but also very counterproductive when I'm trying to take a break from a very long day... sort of a "psychological rape" perhaps, after being forced to listen to someone else's thumping bass for hours upon hours in my very own home.
I just don't want to add to the mess. I don't like it when I have to deal with it, and I don't want to make anyone else feel miserable either.
While humanity has been spreading out to new places ever since Africa, everywhere they go, a significant number of them tend to then congregate in towns/villages/cities/mega-cities. Now, rather then flee into the wilderness again in reaction to the stressors of this (which is really difficult nowadays), people control their personal space with headphones.
Congratulations, Dr Bull. Your 'research' delineates your name.
so, were's the scientifical evidence?
I'm so bloody tired of bleeding heart educational elite that consider social sciences real science. They aren't. Can you consuct economy studies in a controlled environment? No? Well then, it's not a science. Can you conduct natural response studies on humans? No? Well then, it's not science.
It might be a discipline, but stop being a fool and passing your limited study off as a real science for the sake of funding and/or acceptance. It's dastardly and insulting.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Walking around in public with headphones isn't something new.
People were doing this twenty years ago with a Sony Walkman casette tape player. It was considered rude back then and it was going to make you go deaf back then. Nothing has changed except that it's coming from a tiny digital memory chip instead of a casette tape.
You should buy one of these (http://preparedness.com/ecoblasrecai.html) and whenever he starts shouting across the room, fire it off. If he complains, tell him to stick his fingers in his ears or listen to music.
"Ayn Rand is a bloody socialist compared to me." - Robert A. Heinlein
If at first you DON'T succeed, Skydiving is NOT for YOU!!
One of my coworkers once said:
It's going to be a headphone day.
What he meant by that is that he needed to block out all the annoying noise coming out of other people's mouths and so on as they came back and asked questions. I do that sometimes too.
A lot of the employees where I work are Mexican and most of them have cd players/radios and listen to spanish music all day. Most of the American workers have cd players/radios to listen to music in english. What ends up happening everyday is someone turns the volume up on their radio a little bit and a chain reaction starts. By the end of the day everyone has to yell to talk to the person next to them.
"the fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached to it." - Grandpa Simpson
and beans have been around for even longer.
i'm sure we all know that old adage...
beans, beans, the magical fruit...
I was just thinking about this type of habit this morning.
What genres of music do you listen to that correspond to your activities?
This is how I have my playlists setup:
gaming: Dance-hip hop-techno
coding: classical
browsing: top40 (70's, 80's & 90's)
General computer activities: all of the above
How do your activities influence what you want to listen to?
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Repeat until he gets the message, or you get fired. In the event of the latter you'll have a very good case for constructive dismissal.
I recently purchased a set of quality headphones to shield my music from my neighbors - who live a thin wall of drywall away. Whenever anyone watches a movie at night or listens to their favorite songs I can hear it very well - the bass especially so.
I've complained a number of times and now the level has been brought in to check but every now and then I hear them.
I want to listen to my music, too. Sometimes loudly. But how do I listen to my music my way without being hypocritical and by being respectful to my neighbor?
My Solution: Headphones. It was an apiphany to me. While I was in the US Navy onboard a submarine, whether at sea or in the barracks, we all had headphones and peaceful bliss listening to our music without someone threatening to float test your stereo equipment or CD player.
For those of you who live in a condo, like I do, for the sake of your neighbors and yourself, buy a set of headphones. It's a whole lot easier than explaining to the Condo Association why noise complaints are being issues against you - and in my association, the bylaws are written such that noise complaints can get your sorry butt tossed out into the street. Permenently!
I sometimes use headphones as a concentration aid when working at a computer. I found listening to music distracing so I tried listen to white noise for a while. I used a radio tuned to an empty VHF frequency, ocasionally I'd hear voices drifting in from hundreds of miles away and end up playing ham radio instead of working.
I'v now assembled a playlist of no-vocals no-beats ambient music. Classical is ok but all the well known tracks remind of of adverts.
Oftentimes I wear headphones that don't even have a player connected to them so I can actually walk more than 20 metres without some bum or charity person or club promoter hassling me.
I lived pretty much in the sticks before I came to uni. Boring it may have been but at least people leave you the hell alone. And to all the afformentioned: Look, I don't give a crap about what you think I should pay attention to at the moment. I am currently trying to get from A to B and you're in my way. You don't have some sort of fucking entitlement to my time, and at times I'm tempted to wear a "I don't give a fuck so piss off" t-shirt to get the point across.
But of course that wouldn't be very polite, would it.
People wear headphones to give the voices in their heads some company.
I personally wear them to drown out the sounds of my PHB.
WTF? Over?
You want me to take a guy called Dr. Bull seriously?
No trees were harmed in the posting of this message. However, a great number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
The site where geeks can live inside a hermetically sealed echo-chamber of geekness where any attempt to understand the world that is not thoroughly based on geekness can be denigrated, and shows of ignorance actually win you plaudits and approval.
personally i think people that wear headphones are inconsiderate to their fellow humans. back in high school there were kids that would wear headphones when talking to the teacher in class, which is the ultimate f-u statement if there ever was one. by wearing headphones you are telling me that you don't care to interact with me, and that's fine by me. but if you try to initiate a conversation with me i am just not going to talk to you. you are also tuning out the reality around you and indirectly making a statement that it is of lesser importantance. if you value your inner space so much perhaps you should consider moving to a sub-urban setting?
On the rare occasion I needed to go to Tijuana, I found that sunglasses were indispensable. Not so much for protecting my glazzies (important because UV is very destructive) but for controlling social interaction. I would never walk around that city with headphones on, but sunglasses are a neccessity.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
I used to work in a library where I was asked to shelve carts upon carts of books for hours on end. The all knowing president of the library disallowed us to wear headphones on the job because "customers"(fellow students) would be less likely to ask us questions when we were wearing headphones. Though he was right about students being less likely to ask us questions, morale plummetted because shelving books just sucks, it requires just enough mental energy that you can think about how much the job sucks but not daydream. Now I have a much better job at the helpdesk *screams*
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
Big 40 watt speakers, some Motorhead playing with the volume at 11 on the boombox gives me loads of space on the tube and on busses. Doesn't half go through a shit load of batteries though.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I thought psychology was BETWEEN headphones, (not behind)
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pag ename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1 078097705362&call_pageid=970599109774&col=Columnis t1022130995407
Benifits of isolated music? I am a paramedic on the overnight shift and code during the day when my shift is over, Sometimes to resist the urge of falling asleep, the earbuds and the tunes help me focus and stay awake. But the real trick for me is a playlist of songs by chick vocalist. The tone of the female vocals seem a little more pleasant than male vocals.
I now wear headphone when I walk home from work. And I'm usually not listening to music. I've discovered it's the only way to get past the numerous panhandlers I pass on the way home.
It doesn't stop them from asking for money or cigarettes. But when I'm wearing headphones, they don't scream at me for ignoring them. I've tried saying "sorry," or "not today," or something else, but they still scream at me if I don't give them money. Just ignoring them pisses them off even more. The headphones work like a charm.
A publicly traded company exists solely to make profits for shareholders.
i'll phone your head.
I absolutely refuse to walk to my office without headphones. Every morning I walk north from Penn Station NY down 8th ave. I only have a few blocks to go, but it's like a gauntlet of questionable social interactions. People furiously wave papers for barbershops and other crap in your way, "Change? Change?", and the nasty people who spend all day hanging around hitting on anything in heels.
Add sunglass and headphones and the world is my music video. Not to mention I'm preserving my desire to have children some day by wearing headphones on the train.
Then I spend all day listening to internet radio so I can focus on my work and not hear the loud office gossip over from the next area. We have an open office design where teams share a large square space, all facing outward to a shared desk. Good for teamwork, bad for concentration.
I would get nothing done without headphones...and that only on the days I could bear to come to work.
of the copious postings in which people are ranting, "this is not science!" "this is claptrap!" "obvious!" and by implication, "this is not worth discussing!"
I'd respond, but I don't want to make fools of the ranters.
Heh. Take that stick of irony and smoke it!
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
yet we still want to be intimately connected to others somehow. the proliferation of things like friendster, livejournal, instant messaging have proven that.
Even in the old days, people did not see each other all the time - once a week for church, or seeing people at the store.
People do want connection - but connection that is controlled. Even IM you can shut down or choose to ignore. I would say intimately is an incrorect term - asynchronously is perhaps a more accurate way to define the kind of connection people want. connections that are instant to them, with inbound connections that can be controlled.
Using music players in a setting with other people around is just a way of exerting some control over physical interactivity with others.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Aye.
Nothing is better than a good playlist to get lots of desk work done. Be that coding, writing, data entry, or grinding out AA points in EverQuest.
Music just gets me "in the zone" so I can focus on the task at hand while at the same time giving coworkers and spouses a visual cue to not interrupt you.
More than half of the documentation I've done for my company is a result of a few good playlists.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Amy
That's an easily verifiable bit of amateur anthropology. Go to any Gold's Gym or other health club overwhelmingly populated by guys and you'll see it in action: women with headphones on are working out right now, thanks very much, and do not want to be told for the umpteenth time that they have "nice abs."
... ick, don't get me started. Kids who show up for dinner or get in the car with the Walkman on are clearly communicating that they Do Not Wish To Be Parented Right Now, and that sends an extra-loud message of Please Parent Me Extra-Hard Right Now. :)
At work it's problematic: some people in cubes who must concentrate on coding need the option of personal music, but people whose job it is to support the people in cubes need to show that they're available from clear across the room. This is very tough to conceptualize among the support staff, who need to feel like they count as much as everybody else or there will be a bunch of very unhappy coders in the cubes.
At home
In fact, Dr. Bull's published papers are more Walkman-oriented:
-
Through the analysis of Walkman use I propose a re-evaluation of the significance of the auditory in everyday experience. I argue that the role of sound has been largely ignored in the literature on media and everyday life resulting in systematic distortions of the meanings attached to much everyday behaviour. Sound as opposed to vision becomes the site of investigation of everyday life in this
article. In focusing thus, I draw upon a range of neglected texts in order to provide a dialectical account of auditory and technologically mediated experience that avoids reductive and dichotomous categories of explanation. I propose a new evaluation of the relational nature of auditory experience whereby users manage their cognition, interpersonal behaviour and social space. The Walkman is perceived as a tool whereby users manage space, time and the boundaries around the self.
But nobody actually reads the Journal of New Media and Society. (Subscriptions are $809 per year.) Nor do they read his book "Sounding Out the City: Personal Stereos and the Management of Everyday Life" (Amazon sales rank: 613,313.)So why is the iPod being mentioned so prominently? Because Bull has articles in the New York Times and the Wired catalog. Both articles mention the iPod, but not the Walkman. Both periodicals run iPod ads.
Any questions?
I found I listened to more of "other people's" music as a result of walkman radios being played too loudly on the bus than all other sources of "external" music combined.
Can someone suggest some ticker symbols of companies in the hearing aid business? This should be a growth industry in the next few decades.
Rank Presidents by th
Here's a thread on a big discussion on headphones:
Headphone discussion
J
I know some people, particularly some girls, that will wear headphones and just let them dangle in their pocket. Not attached to anything. As noticed, you treat people differently when it looks like they're engaged in something else, except studying. So to keep people from bothering them (much) while trying to study they'll fake the headphones.
J
Adverts, shop fascias...
Speak English, ya limey moron!
Does this still mean that I'm weird when I do the waltz down the aisles of the grocery store?
"One touch of Darwin makes the whole world kin." George Bernard Shaw
There are social people.
There are anti-social people.
Stop trying to turn one group into the other. Instead associate yourself with those who share the same sentiments on communication and socialization that you do. Otherwise you're just going to be around a bunch of pissed off people who are annoyed by your constant attempts to engage them in your needy grabs for attention.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Heck, I'll even leave my headphones on when I'm not listening to music, if it will keep that bore from accounting from coming over to my desk to ask me some dumb question or offer up some insipid gossip.
Sometimes I even bob my head to the "music", to reinforce the illusion.
Don't tell me you've never done that before, either....
I think what the articles in the BBC and the earlier one in the NY Times have been reporting on is just the more portable extension of the "go away, I'm ignoring you" persona of the office headphone-wearer.
;)
Damn those pesky terrorists
From the article: "We live in a visually dominated culture and suffer constant bombardment by visible messages.... Using headphones helps to keep the world at bay and reclaim some space."
So, how long before advertisers clue in and start bombarding us with audio messages as well? It wouldn't be hard for advertisers to drown out our headphones, or at least be loud enough to prevent enjoyment of the music. (Of course you can always turn up the volume, but if you do that too much, you'll damage your hearing.)
I couldn't think of a more appropriate name for a "Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies"
Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
ummm... he is not the problem in this situation, sweetcheeks. The problem is the guy who is shouting across the room. HE is the one who should show more consideration for his colleague.
I picked up a pair of large over-the-ear type headphones for use while traveling on airplanes. When they are plugged in to the laptop I get the sound I want without [a lot of] external interruption. Even if they aren't plugged in, they do block some sound and keep the ambient noise down.
I would also mention the non-verbal aspect: they work well for discouraging the Chatty Cathy next to me from starting a conversation.
For those of you who need to decry this as "anti-social" or whatever, knock yourselves out; I simply am not always interested in a discussion.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Through interviews with Walkman owners and now iPod buyers, he found that listening to music acts as a shield, aura or cocoon.
These must have been difficult interviews to get:
"Sir... uh... sir? Would you like to participate... sir? Can you hear me? Sir?!"
A very interesting study that dovetails with some thoughts I've had on the subject.
I've seen similar "control of personal space" with cell phones (and not suprisingly here in Los Angeles) automobiles.
All three offer a way to insulate yourself from your immediate surroundings, albeit in slightly different ways.
A simple example of this is driving a car thru a neighborhood, rather than driving in a neighborhood. The car is an environment unto itself that allows one to pass through another physical space with a minimum of interaction.
As an experiment, I've stopped driving my car in favor of public transportation. Granted, I listen to an iPod, as do many of my fellow riders, but even in this case, I am much less insulated. This is also the case when I walk to and from bus stops and rail stations.
I am actually preferring this mode of transport, and have a renewed love of my city. This probably has much to do with the fact that I am experiencing it differently, interacting with my fellow Angelenos more (despite my iPod), and actually being in my environment, rather than being in my car. Previously, much of my Los Angeles experience was that of being stuck on the freeway, "interacting" with other cars (and sometimes their drivers), most of which were either going too slow or too fast. There are no roses on the freeway.
I haven't owned a cell phone in several years, but I notice a similar phenomena. While one is talking on the phone, a large part of one's attention is placed on the person on the other end of the conversation. There is an overlap between one's presence in the real world and a sort of virtual telephone world. This is most noticeable with people using ear sets, and positively dangerous with people driving cars (especially SUVs, but that's another topic!).
I once watched what I thought was a crazy person walking down the street, ranting and raving about hockey of all things. It was a bit puzzling, since he seemed to be dressed to nicely to be a crazy street person. When he came close enough, I saw that he was talking on a hands-free phone, and was totally oblivious of his surroundings. Other than the fact that he was on the phone, his behavior was completely that of a mentally deranged person hearing voices.
Something of further interest that I haven't spent much time reflecting on is the passive aggressive nature of behavior I've observed in those that use these insulating technologies; especially obnoxious/oblivious drivers, loud cell phone talkers, and the now thankfully less common boom box wielders.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
If you have speakers on the machine you work on, turn something on loud when he does this. He'll get the idea. Eventually. Probably. OK, he sounds like a real dick, and you might have to put the smack down if he doesn't see the error of his ways.
I think that we are talking about one of the very few fundamental shifts in the way people live.
If you go to archeology for answers. people tended to live in small clusters surrounded by large areas of nothing. Take your average medieval ox driver, for an example. He probably lived in a single story hutclose to or with his animals. His neighbors were probably whithin shouting distance, if not close enough to hear when Joe Oxdriver was getting it on with his woman.
Naming conventions conventions also gives us a clue. Many, many medieval types grew up with given name only, for practical purposes. If you wanted to identify Joe Oxdriver to a stranger, you might say "Tell Joe, son of Jim-Bob, of Horseappleville to plow my field before Easter or he's dead." Any person living living in Horseappleville probably knew exactly who that was. They probably called him Joe (nickname.) The point is people were identified by place and family, not by First, Middle, Last, Mother's maiden name, SSN, DLN, and what ever else.
What does this tell us? People use naming conventions because they work. I grew up in a town of maybe 2000 people and they were spread out. I knew maybe 1/2 by name, and a few more were familiar. Any group larger than that will need more rigid naming conventions because people just won't know which family Joe belongs to and I guarantee they won't know where Laurelwood is, and who lives in it. I could locate almost any person in NYC given a proper name and maybe an address, SSN, or other piece of information. I don't need to know anything about the person or their group. Spell the name wrong and it's probably a lost cause. To a medieval, a simple mis-spelling of his Joe Oxdriver's name wouldn't matter, even if they could spell or read. Obviously there are large cities and exceptions, but I believe my generalisation is sound.
Let's say that people lived in small clusters, and that there were only a few tens of millions in Europe. That leaves a lot of extra space, right? Records support that notion. I remember reading a translation of a report from a guy that walked from central Europe to Rome. He said that he walked for weeks without seeing the sun because of the dense forest. Any village or manor was probably surrounded by a lot of empty nothing. The small groups were surrounded by even more nothingness.
When Joe Oxdriver went out to work, he probably only had to commute a couple of miles at most. All he would have heard was the wind, his beasts, and his assistant Oxpicker complaining about how it sucks that they have to look at an ox's butt for 14 hours a day. He would have been able to hear the cathedral's bell from miles away.
Those bells weren't just decorations and pretty sound makers back then. They were the only real way most people marked the hours and seasons. They were a kind of universal pager. This simply wouldn't be practical in today's world where a person commutes 20 miles to work, works in the middle of the constant bedlam of thousands of cars, hundreds of other people and just the generic frenzy of city life. No one would hear or likely care about a cathedral bell, and would probably be pissed that they kept waking the whole neighborhood up at Matins. (3 am prayers?)
Even your nomadic types tended to move about in small, rightly packed groups.
The larger point is that the last few centuries are an abberation, and that headphones offer an way to get us back into a little bubble of the world that we have evolved to live in.
I think that the constant din and crowdedness is a major source of psychological issues today. Joe Oxdriver lived a very quiet, rhythmic life that we just don't have today. The seasons and the prescribed activities in those seasons just didn't change much. Ox farts, harness noises, and occasional shouted directions to the beasts aside, the only noises were natural and rhythmic, and somewhat random. The wind blowing, the insect/frog/bird background would have melded into a very calming mix. Then Joe went home to a
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
Socializing is for cook-outs, bars and singles clubs. Socializing makes you weak; there's so much "social crap" out there. We are a society of mindless chatterers, gossiping about who's going out with who, who has a baby, who is this and who is that. All of this is especially so when it's gossip about aquaintances rather than actual friends. When you have a little downtime open up your ears and listen to the other people in your office chat; you'll see. I'm anti-social and proud of it! Raaaaarrrrrrr!
"Hi"
"..."
"Great weather today!"
"..."
"..."
"..."
Everyone's already so afraid to talk to strangers regardless of headphones, I just gave up. May as well have music instead of silence.
People who commute by car shield themselves from others in a steel cocoon. When they nearly bump into someone, or get stuck behind a slower driver, it results in an outpouring of anger.
So you could say that commuting on foot and by mass transit can be more pleasant than taking a private car, and with the headphones you get a good approximation of the privacy of the car, but without the road rage.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Not only will the correct antinoise be generated to eliminate those irritating whingeing noises that PHBs make, but advanced image processing will remove the unsightly image of the PHB from my field of view, allowing me to continue surfing in peace.
Ah - the joys of inner space!
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
My working day is spent in a cubicle farm. All day long I hear multiple phone conversations going on all day around me.
I am a developer - which means I need to concentrate, very deeply at times. The background noise level is high enough that I can actually hear various conversations for cubes that are close to mine. This can be distracting particularly when you are trying to formulate an idea or write code, as you will find yourself start to listen to the conversations, instead of following your internal dialogue.
To combat this, I sometimes don headphones and get some music going to drown out the conversations (preferably music without any words).
Ideally, developers should have doors that close to block out these distractions - they would be much more productive. Unfortunately, management doesn't think that way...so productivity suffers.
I just want some silence so my mind can think. Until they make the 'cone of silence' generally available in cubicle farms, earphones and music will have to do.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Heh, how much did he get paid to say "Digital players in general and the iPod in particular are having a dramatic effect on the way people behave, he says." What's special about the iPod in this regard?
Once I explained the acronym to my coworkers (it stands for 'Fuck off, I'm busy'), they mairaculously avoided me whenever the sign was displayed.
Much less distracting than headphones, and cheaper than an iPod.
I just bought headphones for using at school. I'm sitting in the lab doing lip sync and everyone around me was getting tired of hearing "We'll be right back" about 8 bazillion times in a row.
Simply, it creates a soundtrack to our lives.
Sometimes using headphones isn't anti-social.
I use them so I won't annoy my roommmates with my music.
It's Strapping Young Lad and Fear Factory.
If you don't think it would annoy my roommates you've obviously never heard any Strapping Young Lad stuff.
homo sapiens was never under such a bombardment of informations like today. 30.000 years ago information was rare. if we do not stop the information flood we will become autistic, canceling out all incoming messages, even those relevant.
i forsee that one day people will use glasses which will whiten out all street billboards. it is possible, it would be the opposite of those glasses which are supposed to put messages on rectangular surfaces.
actually it will be the same glasses. they will cancel out the ads and put a nice browser window on the freed space.
(there was a funny sci-fi flick where a guy found glasses, which showed who was an alien and who was a real person. they also showed, what the real message on the billboards was. i can't rememeber the name...)
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
Here's a couple of possible solutions -
1) speak to him when you're not pissed off with him. Try and speak to him quietly away from colleagues, and he may be more receptive. Politely ask him to bear in mind it's distracting you. Try and get some of your other colleagues to speak to him independantly. Doesn't sound like it'll work, but it's worth a shot.
2) speak to your supervisor. Point out he's is impacting your ability to work. It doesn't sound like you get on with him anyway, so it's not like carpeting him up will make your relationship much worse. Suggest rearranging the seating so he doesn't have to yell across the room to his buddy.
3) If your supervisor is unwilling to deal with him, then you should do what he suggested; listen to music. On big ass speakers. With the bass turned up. Everytime he starts jabbering, turn the volume up a few notches. He'll soon get the message.
Just make sure you've brought the problem up with your boss beforehand, because a) it's your boss' job to sort these problems out and b) it could well be your ass on the line if you haven't already made a complaint beforehand, especially in writing.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
maybe I don't want to hear your inane tidbit of information.
maybe I wish you would take a shower and shut up
"He analyzes them as a "tool whereby users manage space, time and the boundaries around the self.""
What is the guy high on, crack? I can't make the time go faster/slower with a MP3 player, and i cannot expand my boundaries, my body is fixed width/length/weight.
If you want to manage those, i suggest you grab the Astral Dominae, the Chaos Moliri and the Destinae Dominus. Then go to the cosmic forge. (www.wizardry8.com)
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
The socially malcontented boomcar freaks that drive up and down the street next to my place of residence. This has to be one of the more salient and deliberate invasions of personal space I can think of.
First, buy a little voice recorder and record what he says.
Then, buy the most expensive noise-blocking earphones yuo can find and bill him! If he refuses, threaten him with small claims court.
Well personally I think music is a waste of time so have no experience there. But I commute by bus and subway often and always have my nose buried in a book or PDA and have noticed a similar effect to what the article describes. In such crowded conditions people will actually stand/sit closer to you if you are really into a book and not looking around/moving much than they would otherwise.
Although this sounds different than the article's "headphones reclaim some space" theme at first glance, it's actually the same thing - the crowd is not considering you as an active entity and not worrying as much about interacting with you.
and *you*, toots, should get a sense of humour. Read carefully before you patronise people.
Get the plates and swear out a warrant. Most locales have anti-noise pollution laws. (But be prepared to suffer vandalism and take appropriate revenge if necessary.)
We have an ordinance, and I've been in regular contact with our police department liaison regarding this issue. Funny how they try to trivialize a problem that has such a voluminous number of complaints. What's really disturbing is that they approach the enforcement of this ordinance as though it were a business proposition- something to the effect, "if we can issue a minimum of 30 tickets per hour, it will be cost effective." Just DO YOUR JOB for Pete's sake.
Guess I'm fortunate to live in a small (but not wealthy) suburb with a good, responsive police force.
I write songs, and play guitar and other instruments. I cannot have music playing while I program. If there is music playing, I am writing lyrics or adding another musical part. Programming seems to require the same part of the brain that those tasks use.
Is there a divider between musician and non-musician programmers? Musicians analyze the music, and so cannot program while it is playing, since their analysis circuits are already in use. Non-musicians do not analyze the music, and so can use music to filter out the world so they can concentrate better.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
I often find myself sitting at my pc with my headphones on, and no music playing. People tend to not try to talk to me this way.
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.