In
his book, Sound Moves: iPod culture and urban experience, Michael Bull studies
the cultural icon of the iPod and its place in the urban milieu. His
introduction outlines the “increasing mobility and privatization”(2) of sound,
from the fixed Gothic cathedrals to the Citroen DS, to the Sony ‘Walkman’ and
now the iPod. The iPod enables a personalized “soundscape”, through which we
are “no longer prey to the whims of the corporate radio"(2).
Bull goes on to discuss the distinctive nature of the urban milieu that seems to necessitate the use of a personalized music-player for the modern city-dweller. The city is a cold, anonymous place, both socially isolating and polyrhythmic. It is noisy, crowded, and rife with difference. How do contemporary urbanites cope with their simultaneous needs for proximity and privacy? The iPod of course. Living in a world of “mediated we-ness”, music substitutes our “utopian longing” for ‘direct’ experience with ‘an illusion of immediacy’(5). The iPod on one hand saves us from feelings of social isolation and serves our contradictory need for privacy.
Bull explains in the bulk of our reading for this week, how iPod users move through “shared” urban space, in a way that enables them to control their environment. Quotes from Bull’s interviewees often point to the polyrhythmic soundscape of the urban environment, rife with noises, unpleasant and irritating. The iPod allows users to “drown out extraneous noise”, both “transforming” and “managing” the “repelling nature of urban life"(30-31) Thus, in a social world, created through the combinations of a multitude of sounds, contemporary urbanites are eager for control and security, achieved in essence, through the isolation of the self from others in a personalized auditory bubble.
Bull goes on to discuss the distinctive nature of the urban milieu that seems to necessitate the use of a personalized music-player for the modern city-dweller. The city is a cold, anonymous place, both socially isolating and polyrhythmic. It is noisy, crowded, and rife with difference. How do contemporary urbanites cope with their simultaneous needs for proximity and privacy? The iPod of course. Living in a world of “mediated we-ness”, music substitutes our “utopian longing” for ‘direct’ experience with ‘an illusion of immediacy’(5). The iPod on one hand saves us from feelings of social isolation and serves our contradictory need for privacy.
Bull explains in the bulk of our reading for this week, how iPod users move through “shared” urban space, in a way that enables them to control their environment. Quotes from Bull’s interviewees often point to the polyrhythmic soundscape of the urban environment, rife with noises, unpleasant and irritating. The iPod allows users to “drown out extraneous noise”, both “transforming” and “managing” the “repelling nature of urban life"(30-31) Thus, in a social world, created through the combinations of a multitude of sounds, contemporary urbanites are eager for control and security, achieved in essence, through the isolation of the self from others in a personalized auditory bubble.
Not
only have iPod users “transformed the public spaces of the city into private
enclaves of saturated sound”(34), but they have also aestheticized it. The “chilly
nature”(38) of the city has prompted iPod users to transform their realities into
more satisfying, aestheticized space. The iPod, with its personalized playlists
empowers the user to interpret his or her world, while simultaneously remaining
outside it. Many users expressed this sentiment, of being an “invisible,
floating observer,”(43) or existing in a personalized movie script, in which the
world mimics their moods and rhythms. The notion of “experiencing the world as
a movie script”(45) struck me as similar to the feelings of Dr. Pandian’s
interviewees in his exploration of the effects of cinema on rural farmers in
India. How has the language of media and mediation become second nature to our
immediate experiences? The aestheticization process of iPod users reverses the
phenomenon described by Kracauer whereby the urban subject is colonized by the
“dominant rhythms of the city”. Instead, with one’s iPod, the “world is drawn
into the users individual narrative”, creating a subject who as one user
describes, is “much bigger and more powerful [when] listening to music”(48). What
are the implications of this reversal? How do our perception of reality and the
urban environment change when we become masters of the mediated experience, no
longer “diminished subjects”?
Lastly, in his chapter “Interpersonal sound strategies and iPod culture”, Bull discusses the collective use of iPods in automobiles, places of work, and the home. iPod users, despite being encased in their personalized “soundscape” must continue to negotiate interactions with others that are somewhat unavoidable in the urban milieu. How has the iPod changed our understanding of appropriate human interaction? Bull points to consumers’ increasing comfort with no communication in public, the desire to “get in and out” in every day life, as Jain notes (52). The power iPod users felt in conjunction with their ability to shape their urban “public space” and environment with the various moods of their playlists is also relevant in their interactions with others while wearing the dangling white wires. iPod users are empowered to “choose the terms and conditions of potential interactions"(58). This power has transformed the notion of sharing space-- “it no longer necessarily means the sharing of the same set of experiences"(61). What do you make of this view of contemporary urban culture as shared space but separate experience? Bull ends this chapter stating that the iPod can provide “new forms of social possibilities” but that it remains the “archetypal privatizing technology"(65). His conclusion delineates the ubiquitous mediation of the iPod users’ world, which in it contains the dream of immediacy, unmediated experience, and direct access to our experiences and emotions. The illusion of immediacy provided by the iPod helps us to reconcile our dream with the reality of our mediated sensorium.
As I was doing this reading, interestingly enough in a crowded, noisy bookstore, I became distracted by a patron whose tonality and volume I found grating akin to Wes, one of Bull’s interviewees. Without thinking, I put my iPod on in order to simultaneously defocus myself from the distraction and refocus on my reading; plugging into my personalized soundscape was the only way I felt I could pay attention, even though my environment was now technically “louder” than it had been before. How has our notion of what is distracting and focusing changed with the advent of the iPod and a personalized auditory experience? Do you feel that the iPod culture Bull describes is in fact particular to an urban milieu? How would iPod use in a different, less anonymous, more homogenous environment be perceived? What is the place of silence in society now that personalized auditory bubbles have replaced it as “golden”, or is it no longer possible to have silence in an urban environment? Can you relate to the experiences Bull’s subjects describes? What about them seems foreign or familiar? What are the ultimate implications for the future of a “social world” that has become increasingly individualistic?
Lastly, in his chapter “Interpersonal sound strategies and iPod culture”, Bull discusses the collective use of iPods in automobiles, places of work, and the home. iPod users, despite being encased in their personalized “soundscape” must continue to negotiate interactions with others that are somewhat unavoidable in the urban milieu. How has the iPod changed our understanding of appropriate human interaction? Bull points to consumers’ increasing comfort with no communication in public, the desire to “get in and out” in every day life, as Jain notes (52). The power iPod users felt in conjunction with their ability to shape their urban “public space” and environment with the various moods of their playlists is also relevant in their interactions with others while wearing the dangling white wires. iPod users are empowered to “choose the terms and conditions of potential interactions"(58). This power has transformed the notion of sharing space-- “it no longer necessarily means the sharing of the same set of experiences"(61). What do you make of this view of contemporary urban culture as shared space but separate experience? Bull ends this chapter stating that the iPod can provide “new forms of social possibilities” but that it remains the “archetypal privatizing technology"(65). His conclusion delineates the ubiquitous mediation of the iPod users’ world, which in it contains the dream of immediacy, unmediated experience, and direct access to our experiences and emotions. The illusion of immediacy provided by the iPod helps us to reconcile our dream with the reality of our mediated sensorium.
As I was doing this reading, interestingly enough in a crowded, noisy bookstore, I became distracted by a patron whose tonality and volume I found grating akin to Wes, one of Bull’s interviewees. Without thinking, I put my iPod on in order to simultaneously defocus myself from the distraction and refocus on my reading; plugging into my personalized soundscape was the only way I felt I could pay attention, even though my environment was now technically “louder” than it had been before. How has our notion of what is distracting and focusing changed with the advent of the iPod and a personalized auditory experience? Do you feel that the iPod culture Bull describes is in fact particular to an urban milieu? How would iPod use in a different, less anonymous, more homogenous environment be perceived? What is the place of silence in society now that personalized auditory bubbles have replaced it as “golden”, or is it no longer possible to have silence in an urban environment? Can you relate to the experiences Bull’s subjects describes? What about them seems foreign or familiar? What are the ultimate implications for the future of a “social world” that has become increasingly individualistic?
13 comments:
I was especially struck by Sarah’s questioning of the implications of a future social world which has become, thanks to technologies like the iPod, increasingly individualistic. What was so interesting was that while listeners, able to tune out as they see fit and digress into a personalized soundscape affording a kind of privacy and space, they also become dependent in certain respects on the people around them for social interaction. Bull describes how “This separation is furthered by the use of communication technologies whereby individuals increasingly choose the terms and conditions of their interactions with others within mediatised domestic spaces” and “the home becomes a cognitive mirror to the urban street” (51). The architecture of cities themselves along with manipulation of common social space by its inhabitants demarcates the classic distinction between the domestic and the public, the closed and the open. What stems from this, as Bull notes, is a further separation made by the choosing of particular interactions over others. As one of Bull’s interviewees mentioned “if I want to talk to someone I can take the headphones off and talk, but if I don't want to talk I can keep on walking. The person will just think I didn't hear them because I'm distracted by my music instead of ignoring them on purpose”(58). Bull discusses the power this affords the listener who can choose either to facilitate, derail or avoid interaction altogether giving a new sense of control to the individual in a saturated social sphere. However, this has implications for others sharing the space as well. If one is seeking to interact with his or her fellow city dwellers, he or she is at the mercy of the iPod listener, only gaining the satisfaction of interaction only if the listener so chooses. So, in giving more power to the individual to control social space, the iPod paradoxically forces inhabitants of that space to rely more heavily on each other and become more dependent on the whims of the listener.
I too find Sarah’s question regarding the implications of iPod use on the future of our “social world” to be interesting. I find it especially curious with regards to the future of interpersonal strategies; how we will manage to negotiate interactions with others amidst advancing technologies. Bull repeatedly states that “iPod users never willingly interact with others whilst engaged in solitary listening.” This solitary listening and subsequent removal from the total public space is signified by dangling wires and earphones/headphones. Much of Bull’s analysis of interpersonal relationships is based on these tangible objects. Interviewees commented on the “appropriateness” of taking headphones out in having to interact with others, and the public statement made by having headphones in. What do we make, then, of a time when there will be no physical way to tell when someone would prefer to be disengaged? When wires become obsolete and earbuds unnecessary? Will there be some sort of light? An inherent detection system among us? Or might everyone simply assume, at that point, that everyone is at once disengaged and listening to their own soundtrack? The technology that normalizes this concept may be the next significant increase in privatization- from Gothic cathedral to Citroen DS to Apple iPod- that Bull discusses in his introduction. While it is difficult for me to imagine an urban world completely mediated by something more or less invisible, I think it will be the future, and will yet again entirely change the way we interact.
Like Sarah, I also noticed the similarities between Dr. Pandian’s interviewees and Bull’s. Dr. Pandian’s interviewee’s often thought of their lives in a sense that their life could be made into a movie. However I also believe I remember a part where the workers would often take a song, either from their culture or from a movie and apply it to their surroundings. This is similar to what one interviewee of Bull’s comments, “I now listen to music any time I can. Walking to and from work, at work, on vacation, on a train or airplane, even at home when I don't want to disturb my partner…and puts the soundtrack to my life in my pocket and at my fingertips”(3). This similarity of how we apply music to our life during certain activities can be seen in both researched topics.
I also agreed with Stephanie’s idea that “the iPod paradoxically forces inhabitants of that space to rely more heavily on each other and become more dependent on the whims of the listener.” A similar interviewee in Bull’s work who was avoiding a colleague when commuting said “Having my iPod on made it possible for me to focus on the space in front of me (and so ignore him) without feeling that I looked disturbed!...that commute time is the only real private time I get.”(58) Clearly the listener is able to benefit (gain needed privacy and avoid social interaction) through the iPod but how does this lack of potential to communicate affect us (both listener and outsider)? Paulina brings this point out even further by questioning the difficulty in noticing when one wants to be disengaged when technology evolves to the point where we may no longer be able to physically see it. I can almost imagine a world where certain features of technology are kept or added in order to distinguish this.
I also find the potential social implications of iPods to be extremely interesting. I believe that iPods have had and will continue to have a significant influence on our interpersonal interactions. As we become more and more disconnected to the communal moment and more entrenched in our own soundtracked minds, our most social natural tendencies become less practiced and more nerve racking. Our iPods become our safety net from truly interacting with the world. In reading the interviews, I began to see the commonalities of all of our thinking towards iPods and iPod etiquette.
One interviewee stated "When I look at the people around me they appear to be two-dimensional and without significance." (53). In the process of creating our own personal soundscape, the world around is does seem to feel like it is unfolding before our eyes, but almost as a spectacle. I notice that our generation often avoids eye contact, friendly smiles, and waves, and merely walk past other living beings as if they are inanimate. Another interviewee stated, "It's almost liberating to realise you don't have to be polite or do anything. I get to move through time and space at my speed." (53). I think these two interviewees summed up much of the emerging dynamic of the iPod culture. While liberating in many senses, a personal soundscape is also quite isolating and creates a disconnect that causes us to feel little need for traditional affability.
Like the silent disco Dr. Pandian showed in class, while we all are experiencing our own life soundtracks, real life itself has grown silent. I often walk to class listening to music on my iPhone, but on the days I do not, it is always jarring to see how many people walk with their ear buds in, in total silence, though their peers are surrounding them. Alternatively, when I am listening to my music, and I am, say, tapped on the shoulder by a friend, I feel a sort of invasion of privacy. As soon as the ear buds come off, I am brought back into the shared present. I absolutely related to the notion of taking out your headphones as a clear sign that you are ready to interact with the world. Perhaps this is one of our emerging social norms. We learn to respect other's audial privacy until they show us that they are ready to share a soundscape with us. While we do see emerging social rules that seem to be understood by those who use iPods and other portable music players, I can't help but wonder to what extent we will become disengaged from our communal reality and begin to rely solely on the digital extensions of consciousness.
Like Michael Bull says in his book, Sound Moves: iPod culture and urban experience, by creating a personal world with our iPods we can set our music as a background for our life, replacing reality. Why do we "drown out extraneous noise" (according to one interviewee) to control our environment? Has our music become less distracting than the noise of the world outside our headphones? Our iPods are acting as security blankets, making ourselves more comfortable in a world that is otherwise cold and sometimes unwelcoming.
Like iPods, social media is also individualistic: with the creation of Facebook and Twitter, we "tell" our friends and followers what we are doing rather than communicating with them in person. This individualism is also reflected in the usage of our iPods. When we plug in and tune out, it basically shows peers that we shouldn't be bothered. As Stephanie mentioned, one interviewee of Bull's said that when she keeps headphones in, a person won't try to talk to her. We create our own world through our iPods, and thus, our own private world where we control what we feel, see, think, and hear. However, I think that this individualism is gone when we share our music with others. We open up our private world and subject it to judgment (whether good or bad). As Schulman says, though we may "[share our space] but [have a] separate experience" (said an interviewee), there is a loss of individualism. If a person likes what you have shown him, he might add it to his own iPod. In a sense, you two have a shared world. So, though society is becoming increasingly individualistic with the advent of personal technology as Bull declares, so is the way in which we share our personal lives with others.
Stephanie, Sarah, and Paulina have all explored components and “implications of a future social world which has become, thanks to technologies like the iPod increasingly individualistic” (Stephanie). I completely agree that technologies are making the world much more individual – social interactions are changing entirely and social isolation is prevented with the use of iPods. I think it is interesting to note, however, that even as the iPod experience is distinct and individualized, the common Apple strategy is to target the collective and minimize the individual. The beauty of iPods and iTunes is that they are all personal. The songs you want, the playlists you design, the volume you select. However, the marketing strategy does not seem to touch on any of those. Instead, the commercials embrace the collective. In class last Thursday, we saw the common Apple iPod campaign: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlHUz99l-eo. Interestingly enough, the iPod stands out and all details of the person fade away. The individual does not matter; everyone can relate to being the blacked out figure. What stands out is the iPod, the anonymity of t. As Bull writes in his introduction, “iPod culture is a culture in which individual experience is cultivated, fostered and attended to through the micro-management and filtering of experience” (9). Interestingly, this seems to be a universal response and anthropologically studied conclusion – but something that happens to escape the marketing strategies. I wonder why this is; it is not like being an individual is a bad thing – as Bull describes, many people seek this aspect of iPods.
On another note, the success of the iPod makes me wonder why radios are not yet extinct. In what ways are these experiences different? In what ways are they the same?
Ipods truly create a virtual world where people are observing others’ human experience but feel exempt from social participation. Not only do they feel exempt, but also the visual of headphones communicates the assumed exemption to passersby.
In this way, I feel that Ipods give people a false sense of control over their environments by providing a soundscape, texture, or rhythm to their everyday lives. These characteristics can obscure the idea of reality to the listener. The personal bubble creates a distance between the real and virtual world, where the listener seems to be cutting through the environmental ineffectually.
As the Ipod creates distance, I believe it also has the potential to make people feel more integrated and united. Just as Bull points out, the Ipod can help people cope with feelings of anonymity and coldness which cities inflict on urban dwellers.
When verbally communicating one-on-one, it is easy to notice differences between each other. Assuming one is fully concentrated on the other person, you notice differences in speech, opinions, experiences, voice, clothing, style, etc. But in the bubble created by the Ipod, music creates a soundscape to interpret people. By observing people simultaneously interacting and living their lives, one can feels a heightened sense of objectivity and is more aware of the universality of human experience. I have experienced this myself. The distance created between the real world, those listening to “urban sound,” and me, listening to my personal selection of music, almost creates a zoomed out vision where I perceive human activity as a unified machine of interactions. An interviewee experienced the same kind of zoomed out sensation, saying that “ [when I listen to my Ipod], I get more emotional about things...Sometimes I project the lyrical content of songs on to the people I see while I’m listening… I was looking at some of the people… with the look of anxiety on their faces and general angst. It made me want to hug them and tell then it’s OK.” Would that person feel the compulsion to hug a stranger without an Ipod in? Probabaly not. But he feels a generalized weak connection with everyone that he sees and is able to better relate to them.
I find it interesting to compare Ipods to other forms of media that we have previously discussed. It seems that previous medias have too attempted to create a similar “public private” experience like the Ipod create. However, no media, in my opinion, has succeeded with the same measure as the Ipod. In no media does one have the mobility to continue that “public private” experience wherever they go. Television and radio, for example, create the experience by relating to the viewer in “personal” means of advertising while broadcasting to thousands of people simultaneously. But what could be more personal that your own selection of music? Just as Bull points out, the mobility and personalization/privatization of the Ipod is what sets it apart from other media.
I'm going to fallow suite of everyone else agree that sarahs questioning of the implications of the future social world is very interesting in that we do seem to moving towards a more technologically surrounded world that is as individualist as it is social. We are becoming in tune with out social networks which we are making us even more personal at the same time. The iPod is making us more personal and individualistic with the ability to chose exactly what we want to hear. It used to be that we had to listen to what the radio was playing or what was on the record or cd. Now we can mix up playlist and listen to books and even lectures from teachers. All on our personal headphones that no one else can hear. I think the idea of listening to headphones to be a little odd in that it does take away from the social life. if there wasn't anything to listen to then we would not just be quiet. I think we would be more social and would engage in conversation alot more. Especially with strangers at random interactions. I find it odd and rude when someone goes through the line to buy something at the store with their heAdphones on and they don't say a word. The only time I actually put headphones on and tune out of the world around me is when I'm long bus rides. But even then I find myself pulling the headphones off to talk to people way too much. I think the iPod and the headphones have enabled People to become less social and more introverted. Which is a shame because it does not help build social skills which are important in life. At the same time the iPod and headphones do help with tuning distractions out. When noise around you is breaking concentration and the iPod provides more sound of choice that gives someone the ability to stay focused it can be a good thing. The iPod can help and it can hurt at the same time I believe. It definitely increases the individuality of people today.
I found the passage on the social existence and privatization through ipod to be particularly interesting. The ipod would appear to isolate a consumer from their surroundings by providing the consumer with their own private soundtrack to block out the noise of their environment. However, their is a new social connection being made through the music, not necessarily to the consumers surroundings, but to a new world mediated through music, to which Bull refers as "we-ness." The music being played transports the user to a world of sound matrix, but at the same time, making it a world of their own, which gives them a sense of customized control. They may be isolating themselves from their everyday life, but they are transporting themselves to a world or audio culture.
This is of use to my own independent project on Starbucks because the ipod world reminds me of the world of Starbucks. Customers choose to go to the Starbucks café and there, they choose their own drink, which usually comes in their own cup with their own name on it. The drink one chooses in Starbucks is what separates this customer from that customer, and the music or playlist one listens to is what separates this ipod consumer from that ipod consumer, though they are all part of the ipod audio culture. Everyone sitting in Starbucks, drinking their own Starbucks selections, is also listening to the Starbucks music, which is the music of the store they chose to sit in. In this way, Starbucks could be compared to a playlist, one of the Starbucks atmosphere. Each customer can sit and do work in private. The Starbucks atmosphere takes people away from work, from their jobs, or from their houses, and gives them a Starbucks soundtrack, a Starbucks table, and a customized Starbucks drink.
Going back to Bull’s book, I agree the sharing of space is not the same as the sharing an experience. The ipod gives us the choice to participate in the “urban world” or not. But, to answer Sarah, I think this choice applies to any space, not just an urban space. Anywhere you can take an ipod, you have the choice to interact with your ipod or to interact with your surroundings. I was sitting on a boltbus this weekend, and the lady sitting next to me had her ipod on. To me this indicates that she does not want to interact with me, her surroundings, and instead would like to zone out in her own audio mediated world. If we were both sitting there fully aware of the boltbus space, we may have started up a conversations, or at least she may have been more aware of my actions in her space (shifting position, getting up to use the restroom, etc.) during the trip.
I agree, like the majority of the class, that the future social world has become individualistic. This has definately paved an interesting path in the future of communication amongst individuals because, like Sarah stated, many people use their iPods in many public places and while they are working on assingments. For some, the use of electronics while doing work has helped them focus on their tasks, but this semester as a Psychology major running dual task experiments, I have also found that it hinders some people's ability to complete even the simplest of tasks. For select individuals, is the use of an iPod deleterious to their work? In class on Thursday someone brought up the fact that if they see someone walking around campus with headphones in, it is the universal sign that they do not want to interact with anyone else, they just want to keep themselves in their own world of their music. Is that going to alter the way people communicate in the future? We live in a society now where technology is all around us, helping and hurting at the same time, and I think it is very interesting how, like the iPod, technology's advantages and disadvantages are soley based on the individual and how he or she chooses to use it.
This bubble that is talked about involving an individual and the use of the ipod can be argued. Sure some people enjoy and want to have this bubble around them so they turn their music on loud so that they aare pretty much blocked off from the real world which is where this idea of the bubble comes from. However, when it is mentioned that a whole community is made up of these ipod users and that it is almost imaginery, I also disagree with.
The ipod has sold itself fairly easily across the world and most people own some generation or model of an ipod. It was much different from anything the world had ever seen when the ipod came out and allowed for people to create there own playlists very easily instead of having to produce cds or different forms of soundtracks. These ipods hold many more songs that any form of cd or soundtrack and there is no limits as to what can be put on these ipods, no regulations at all, it is all personal preference of the person who is apparently in this ipod bubble.
I also agree that the future social world has become individualistic as communication becomes more advanced. The ipod is known to hault communication, because as most people know, if someone is listening to an ipod and you can clearly hear the music through their iphones, they probably do not want to speak to you.
These ipods are also a bit of a distraction to most people. I have the problem of listening to my ipod and paying attention to what song is playing or figuring out the lyrics and often this can distract me from the work or studying that I am trying to do at the time. But at the same time, this music can help me fall asleep on long rides and the ipod is a very simple way of sending these sound waves through a pair of headphones so that only I can hear them and it does not disrupt anyone around me
With regard to Sarah’s question about the view of contemporary urban culture being a shared space but a separate experience, I feel that is definitely possible for media such as the iPod to create different worlds for people who utilize it. For example, Michael Bull has in his paper an interviewee named Tracy, who uses her iPod to create a ‘bubble’ that she uses to isolate and make different her experience from the experiences of those around her: “In Phoenix we have a lot of Mexican immigrants. They don't learn English and they have no control over their children. I believe in mutual respect when in public places. It was becoming increasingly difficult for me to shop without encountering a bombardment of Spanish or screaming kids. The iPod lets me filter them all out” (36). In this way, although Tracy shares a space with those around her when she goes shopping, her subjective experience of “the bombardment of Spanish or screaming kids” would be completely different depending on whether of not she uses her iPod.
This notion of walling oneself in to create a different world of experience is expanded on by Bull: “iPod use appears to represent for many users a 'device paradigm' whereby they withdraw from engagement with the world around them into the circumscribed world of auditory pleasure provided by the iPod, an urban world in which the 'other' is ignored, negated and denied” (36). By negating others, the iPod user is able to experience their lives differently than others, by ‘filtering’ out the ‘other’, whether undesirable (e.g. screaming children) or desirable (e.g. an oncoming car).
Rachel brought up the silent disco that was discussed in class, and I believe that this concept of creating a new world of experience with the iPod can be applied to it. The experience of a person participating in a silent disco with his or her iPod will be fundamentally different than a bystander passing through the crowd without headphones, even through these two people share the same space.
A lot of the previous comments have made reference to the observation emphasized by Bull that the iPod privatizes soundspace in locations that would have otherwise been defined as 'public' spaces. I would have to agree with Bull and Sarah S. that the 'we-ness' created by the music has allowed for the generation of audio subcultures, but on the whole the hyper-personalization of music has increased our likelihood to dissociate from our surroundings.
I wonder to what extent our depersonalization in public spaces will go, and when we will reach the point that public spaces are no longer public. The example of bluetooth headsets are a good example to illustrate why this concern is-- although we cannot see them in people's ears, they can be busy being involved with a person (or people) hundreds of miles away. Talking from personal experience, I am often puzzled when someone walks down the street seemingly talking to themselves on a bluetooth headset. Sometimes, people even reply to what they say on the street mistakenly thinking they are not on the phone. Will this eventually reach the point that we can all be considered to be in 'private' when we are walking around in what is currently-referred to as 'public'? Like Bull, I think this is possible given how the IPod and cellular phone have evolved, and thus alleged personalization may result in the greatest depersonalization our human societies have ever know.
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