The iPod People

Excerpts from an interesting Andrew Sullivan piece:

There were little white wires hanging down from their ears, or tucked into pockets, purses or jackets. The eyes were a little vacant. Each was in his or her own musical world, walking to their soundtrack, stars in their own music video, almost oblivious to the world around them. These are the iPod people.

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Every now and again some start unconsciously emitting strange tuneless squawks, like a badly tuned radio, and their fingers snap or their arms twitch to some strange soundless rhythm. When others say “Excuse me” there’s no response. “Hi”, ditto. It’s strange to be among so many people and hear so little. Except that each one is hearing so much.

Yes, I might as well own up. I’m one of them. I witnessed the glazed New York looks through my own glazed pupils, my white wires peeping out of my ears. I joined the cult a few years ago: the sect of the little white box worshippers.

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You get your news from your favourite blogs, the ones that won’t challenge your view of the world. You tune into a satellite radio service that also aims directly at a small market — for new age fanatics, liberal talk or Christian rock. Television is all cable. Culture is all subculture. Your cell phones can receive e-mail feeds of your favourite blogger’s latest thoughts — seconds after he has posted them — get sports scores for your team or stock quotes of your portfolio.

Technology has given us a universe entirely for ourselves — where the serendipity of meeting a new stranger, hearing a piece of music we would never choose for ourselves or an opinion that might force us to change our mind about something are all effectively banished.

Atomization by little white boxes and cell phones. Society without the social. Others who are chosen — not met at random. Human beings have never lived like this before. Yes, we have always had homes, retreats or places where we went to relax, unwind or shut out the world.

When the Internet reached critical mass, I must admit I was one of those with someone Utopian visions about how it would allow everyone to connect to myriad different points of view, and thus make the world a more open, accepting, understanding place.

But I think Andrew's essentially right. Yes, the Internet makes it easier than ever to access points of view different from one's own, and so creates a huge opportunity for learning and expanding. But it makes it even easier to max-out on information content that reflects the one point of view each of us is most comfortable. Subscribe to a few favorite blogs, which usually are mirror-images of our own opinions, and that's often about all the information we have time to absorb in a day.

If we want to go beyond that to hear other perspectives, it takes a conscious effort. The upshot is that Andrew is right: new technology, from the Internet to the iPod has more of a fragmenting, atomizing effect than an integrating, expanding one.