8 ms·

Headphones Everywhere

62 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

gerbilly 10y ago
When drinking tea, I drink tea. [1] When coding, I code. When listening to music, I listen to music. When sitting on a plane, I sit on a plane. Resist the urge to distract yourself and see what happens.[2] [1] There is the story of the Zen student whose teacher taught him "When drinking tea, just drink tea." The same student later discovered his teacher drinking tea and reading the newspaper. When confronted the teacher said, "When drinking tea and reading the newspaper, just drink tea and read the newspaper." [2] I believe that boredom and frustration tolerance are important life skills worth developing. Also I have found that many things that at first seem boring become more interesting if you pay close attention to them.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- logicalDuck 10y ago
  When you're drinking tea you're allowing the hot water to distract you from the ingredients of the tea, you should really just chew the herbs. All experience is blended, it's good to enjoy what you're doing fully but that doesn't preclude adding additional things to the experience. Sometimes the addition of those things allow you to have a fresh look at the situation you're in. Just sit on the grass, sit on the grass and read a book, sit on the grass and listen to music. You could mark two of those situations as distracts or redefine them as unique blended experiences to enjoy. I prefer the latter. Mindfulness practice is valuable though, I just think blended experiences like blended foods are equally valuable. I'd rather have a sandwich then separately eat bread, lettuce, cheese, tomato and mustard.
  - gerbilly 10y ago
    The teaching to "Just drink tea" is a training principle. The reason that the teacher can read the news paper and drink tea, is that he's completed his training.[1] Most of us never attempt any such training though. In my comment I wasn't attempting to make a moral or aesthetic prescription. I was just pointing out that training the ability to focus on doing one thing is worthwhile. [1] Also most Buddhist teachings reveal several layers of meaning when actually attempted. You are supposed to _try_ and sit and drink tea only, and see what happens, and what that reveals about your mind.
dijit 10y ago
this comes off like such rambling with no real point to it. I suppose if I had to try and find his points they would be: * "headphones are bad because they cause us to be isolated" * "Millennials are seeing themselves as hard done by" The second point might not be what the author means though, but the former has strong tones throughout the piece. I do not agree, headphones are a way of having some level of privacy in an increasingly crowded and public world. We are expected to use public transport, for the good of our wallets and the good of the planet. However those public transport machines are especially loud (Bus engines are incredible) and we're beholden to the whim of shitty teenagers playing rap music at 100db from tiny speakers. This is before I mention the increasingly popular open-office work environments, which put a large number of people in a room together for 8-10 hours every day. I do not want to hear Debbie finalising that sales call and then talking shit to her colleague about the guy from third.. I want to get my work done and focus. Headphones are the only way to do that in a modern work environment.
- JamesBaxter 10y ago
  Amanda Petrusich is a woman. I'm more surprised that podcasts and audiobooks aren't mentioned. I only listen to music at the gym and at work. When I'm travelling I like to listen to stuff that will push me but when I'm working I just use music to block the noise.
  - abstractbeliefs 10y ago
    While it's inconsiderate to the author to get her pronouns right, does her being a man or woman have any bearing on the article or the above criticism of it?
    - JamesBaxter 10y ago
      Not especially, I was going to make the 2nd part of my comment regardless. I am however trying to consider the author more as I read online though in this case I don't think it adds any additional context.
- Can_Not 10y ago
tartuffe78 10y ago
Seems to assume everyone is listening to music, I'd bet it's closer to a 50/50 split between music and podcasts.
- lsaferite 10y ago
  I'd say that split is VERY regional dependent and that you are likely overestimating the percentage of podcast listeners as a whole.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  I often listen to FM radio, BBC Radio 4 which is primarily speech.
- redrummr 10y ago
  I've still to meet a person who listens to podcasts. And I know a few techies here in Sydney. Might be more of an American thing? Not sure.
durzagott 10y ago
Interesting the author made no mention of hearing damage and the impact it could have on the younger generation. I wonder if it was a deliberate decision to avoid a common debate or if she just didn't consider it.
PeterStuer 10y ago
For the most part the shared auditive environment is polluted beyond believe. Loud 24x7 traffic, degenerates with tiny phone speakers blaring, no holds barred shouting across the street ... The only way to keep some sanity is to shut it out. It is not the people donning headphones that are a-social, it is those that make it necessary to wear one that should be blamed.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Yes, one doubts the author would prefer it if we all traded in our headphones for boomboxes.
  - elbear 10y ago
    Why should those be the only options?
spodek 10y ago
Here in New York City, 90% of subway riders may be listening to headphones or engrossed in their smartphones, playing games, checking email, etc. I have a feeling it's cut down on altercations and fights, maybe even panhandling and performers. I wonder if there's any data on it or if a similar effect happens elsewhere.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Yet the wardens seem desperate to keep those items out of prisons...
  - cholantesh 10y ago
    I think the argument is that earphones could be used as a garroting device.
    - Wohlf 10y ago
      As well as cellphones being used to send orders to lackeys outside of prison.
      - jessaustin 10y ago
        Yeah sure the modern personal electronic device has lots of features you wouldn't want in a prison. But everything in prison has been modified for prison use: beds, toothbrushes, toilets, etc. Electronic devices can also be modified to fit the prison environment. Prisoners who are busy playing Angry Birds aren't busy plotting angry mayhem.
    - kalleboo 10y ago
      Would be interesting if they designed a pair of earbuds that had a deliberately weak cable so it couldn't be used as a weapon
      - kwhitefoot 10y ago
        It might be better to design a prison that actually rehabilitated people. Then perhaps there might be a little less violence.
xchip 10y ago
This article has been published every year since the headphones were invented. Before the headphones the isolation device were books, a thing that would make us detach from reality and turn us crazy (this is the main plot of Don Quixote, a novel written in 1620)
- qntty 10y ago
  This is also one of the main points of this article.
  - xchip 10y ago
    which one exactly? I quickly scanned though it and didn't find anything interesting but the usual cliches
    - oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
      > It turns out that observers have been fretting about headphones—and the disconnection they facilitate—for decades. Early Walkman prototypes included a second headphone jack so you could share your tunes with a buddy ...
  - saturdaysaint 10y ago
    It's amazing how few commenters seem to show any comprehension of the article.
    - xchip 10y ago
      No wonder given low wheat/chaff ratio this article has. Most people are working and can only quickly scan through it trying to find the main points. If the smart people in ycombinator get the wrong point it probably means the article was poorly written.
      - saturdaysaint 10y ago
        Most of the comments seem indicative of an exceptionally poor scan, or at least a scan optimized for a Vox article or Reddit ELIF thread. I also scanned the article and thought it was obvious that the point was far afield from "headphones/technology bad" - just read the first sentence of the first four paragraphs and the shape of the argument is pretty easy to intuit. I don't have time to get into the meaning of a sharp uptick in headphone usage either, but shitcomments that are obviously reactions to the photo caption are the real chaff here.
pystack 10y ago
When I code, headphones block out distractions and music gets me in the right mentality. When refactoring or debugging code, I like fast paced with action-packed lyrics. Dragonforce Through the Fire and Flames, Darude Sandstorm, Linkin Park, Eminem Til I Collapse When writing new code, I like slow paced with thoughtful or romantic[1] lyrics. Joni Mitchell, Mozart, Carpenters I've also started to put the song on repeat on the background. I recommend ListenOnRepeat. [1] http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/psy-methoden/methodenlehre/Loveandsex.pdf http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/psy-methoden/methodenlehre/Lov...
teekert 10y ago
I listen to podcasts usually, makes my bike commute of 25 min seem to go much faster while I'm listening to No Agenda or the Linux Action Show. I do notice though that whenever I take them off, usually because I already have a head full of thoughts, there is a soothing effect. I think the constant flow of information is nice as a distraction but makes one much less mindful of other things. The brain does not seem to get the periods of wandering thoughts it craves from time to time. Constant information intake seems to make me less friendly to people, makes me stare and smile less. It makes me enjoy the beauty around me less. So I started to take them off more often, but it feels like I'm fighting an addiction when I do.
- rtpg 10y ago
  Similar feelings. Podcasts in particular are tricky because they do require active participation, in a way. Even if it doesn't feel like it, parsing and paying attention to what people say is work I've found that listening to random music ("I'm feeling lucky" on Google Music) is much more soothing than listening to any podcast... But walking around and listening to your surroundings are a good way to cool off, and kinda forget about difficulties. Listening to the traffic go by can be hypnotic....
- legooolas 10y ago
  Personally I prefer to be able to hear cars and people when I'm cycling, so that I'm less likely to hit anything or be run over. Do you not feel it makes you more likely to have an accident?
  - teekert 10y ago
    Well we do bike mostly on biking lanes here in the Netherlands (no chance of contact with a car) and we have a very biking oriented culture in general. Also here the cars are guilty (car driver can claim the damage with the bikers insurance afterwards though) unless proven that they had no responsibility what so ever (bikers and pedestrian are so called "weaker traffic participants"). It may make car drivers more cautious, or perhaps the fact that almost everybody is on a bike at some point makes them more careful. Also, on roundabouts (there are a quite some) bikes always have priority as well. In any case, I have never heard of any accidents. It is known though that here, when the schools start after a holiday there is an increase in accidents, this is probably related to car drivers needing to become used again of the high amount of bikers on the road. Here is a nice example of a typical rush hour, the red lane is only for bikes, of course everybody is very careful at intersections :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-AbPav5E5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-AbPav5E5M (by the way the bus also has it's own lane in this example, and everybody knows: bus drivers don't mess around.)
harveywi 10y ago
Reminds me of the seashell ear-thimbles from Fahrenheit 451.
- cholantesh 10y ago
  Such an evocative image. Stays with me much more than Clarke's Newspad in 2001.
coldpie 10y ago
> Is the ubiquity of headphones just another emblem of catastrophic social decline, edging us even deeper into narcissism and unsociability? No. * closes tab
- georgebarnett 10y ago
  Maybe the ubiquity of headphones is telling us that our shared spaces are too loud and full of background noise. Think piped music, announcements, adverts, engines, etc etc..
  - sangnoir 10y ago
    > Maybe the ubiquity of headphones is telling us that our shared spaces are too loud Or maybe the shared spaces are plain boring. I don't know what the author expects people to do on flights, but I'm not going to be twiddling thumbs for any flight longer than 30 minutes. Substitute headphones for paperbacks or newspapers, and the rant would still be relevant (for the lack of a better word).
    - k-mcgrady 10y ago
      I'm not sure if it was intentional or not but it's interesting all of your alternatives are solitary activities? How about talking to the people you are travelling with (family/friends)? Seems to me that's the kind of thing the article is hinting at.
      - sangnoir 10y ago
        > I'm not sure if it was intentional or not but it's interesting all of your alternatives are solitary activities? How about talking to the people you are travelling with (family/friends) It was intentional, and my point was that the author wasn't really railing against headphones exactly: humans have been engaging in solitary activity in public for eons, and the author is attempting to headfake readers into believing it's a recent phenomenon. > How about talking to the people you are travelling When traveling with friends/family, I usually talk to them. With strangers it's a dire gamble: on one hand, I choose my travel music/movie/book ahead of time and they are guaranteed to be interesting. On the other hand, the gent or lady the next seat over could be a great conversationalist or they could be really annoying and I won't tell them to shut up for civility's sake.
fdomig 10y ago
I might just not like to hear the loud outside world and block it with headphones.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
HemanHeartYou 10y ago
>Portable audio, then, is likely more a reflection than an engine of our egotism I'm just going to leave that brilliant observation right there. :^)
pgrote 10y ago
"In 2012, the headphone industry saw a quick thirty-two-per-cent leap in revenue " And once Apple removes the headphone jack, the revenue will spike again.
draw_down 10y ago
People on the bus are assholes who just play audio from their speakers. People in my (open plan, of course) office are assholes who have impromptu meetings and boorish conversations all day. People on planes bring their screaming children. Headphones are a necessity.
sevenless 10y ago
A reason that some European countries use in recent laws that ban women from wearing full-face burkas/niqabs, is it stops the wearers interacting/communicating with others. The same logic implies we should ban public wear of headphones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering "The key argument supporting this proposal is that face-coverings ... [are] a social hindrance within a society which relies on facial recognition and expression in communication. ... the European Court of Human Rights upheld the French law on 1 July 2014, accepting the argument of the French government that the law was based on "a certain idea of living together.""
- Tehnix 10y ago
  >as it stops the wearers interacting with others Are you sure that's the reason? I'd imagine it would have something to do with the laws (at least here in Denmark) around it being illegal to be fully masked.
  - lloeki 10y ago
    You got it reversed, this is the justification that has been put forward for the law to come into existence in France. The basic idea is that non-verbal face-to-face communication is culturally expected as a very basic and fundamental part of our social interactions, however inconsequential they seem. An example: bump into someone on the bus, and you'll instantly look at their face to know if they're hurt or annoyed or sorry or vindictive without a word, and can proceed on with appropriate verbal communication. In other cultures maybe arm language suffices but in a European one it creates unease at best not to see the other's full face. This is basically why even ill people don't wear masks around here (when it would really help not spreading diseases like flu) which is, I hear, basically a given in Asian cultures. The French government decided to make a statement about it and declared that masking your face is illegal (barring a couple exceptions including medical reasons, safety, and cultural†† events) for cultural and security† reasons. † Obviously terrorists vet in favor of RFC3514 and choose to wear masks in public and so everyone is now safer what you didn't think of the children did you? †† Otherwise that would make for an interesting conundrum
- 10y ago
zhte415 10y ago
I find wearing headphones decreases local spacial / social awareness hugely. This makes things like crossing a road dangerous.
pdkl95 10y ago
> “Do people really like music this much?” Yes. /me checks that the Grado SR80e is positioned properly and plays The Soft Moon ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgwGEG10WIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgwGEG10WIY )
ungzd 10y ago
In Russia, lots of people used headphones about 5 years ago. Now I see people with headphones very rarely. Also, I think interest to music is in decline here.
diydsp 10y ago
Initial comments on this article indicate it elicited a persecuted response: Commenters are defending their use of headphones. This was perhaps due to the tone of the article (phrases like "catastrophic social decline" don't help...) and/or the tone of media in general which treats every topic as life and death. The existence of all the headphones though raises more interesting questions that are fun and interesting to think about in a sci-fi way than "is it acceptable for you to react in this way?" There are hints of it in the article, but they don't come through well. The key questions are mostly of curiosity. First, there is simply "what are people listening to?" Is it always music, what kinds of podcasts, meditations, lectures, spy recordings? I am particularly interested in shared experiences via headphones. It is okay in my book to not want to hear unwanted machine and person noise. Now what are the creative possibilities for making, e.g. mini groups of shared listening? In a sense, we are all sharing the same podcast, albeit time-shifted. What about group music-composing on subway trains? What about several people on the same bus or walking path to listening to the same thing together at the same time? What about historical tours, etc. This could be fun. And having all these headphones around might actually help it happen.
EdiX 10y ago
Least interesting thing I have read this year. I'm starting to think that use of the word 'performative' is a dead giveaway for pointless navel-gazing.
oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
I sometimes listen to music, through headphones, when I'm travelling on my own on a train. Since I regularly make the same journey, it can get a little boring. I'm not always in the mood for work and I don't always carry a book/magazine with me; music is an excellent alternative. I wouldn't dream of playing that music out loud, inflicting it upon everyone else. That's the boring explanation. It may lack the keen social commentary that the article speculates on, but it happens to be true.
6stringmerc 10y ago
>“Do people really like music this much?” I have wondered, incredulously, while tallying endless white earplugs. Does the New Yorker really pay good, honest money for such laughably sheltered premises? It's no accident Taylor Swift's take-home last year was $170 million. Sometimes people wear headphones simply to tune out the grocery store's bland Adele-centric easy listening. Loving music is pretty much a human being thing.
- gmarx 10y ago
  One could argue that clearly that is exactly how much people like music at that particular time and place, assuming she can distinguish those listening to music from those not
circa 10y ago
I was just talking about this with a friend yesterday. So crazy this article just popped up. She snagged some headphones on Prime day too. haha.
kstenerud 10y ago
I've found that the more urban and compressed the environment, the more headphones you see. I started doing it too when riding the bus or working in my "open plan" office, to the point that I wore them on average 10 hours a day. Now I live in the countryside, my nearest neighbor is a mile away, and I haven't used headphones in 6 months, nor have I even thought about them until reading this article. And I still don't feel like using them.
cs2818 10y ago
Perhaps I am just paranoid but I don't enjoy the complete blocking of environmental sound cues that occurs when wearing most headphones. It would be nice to have more headphones which focus on delivering an ambient noise passthrough mode.
gmarx 10y ago
When you listen on headphones, sound in the middle of the mix, which might seem to come from the middle of and slightly behind home speakers, appears to come from the middle of your skull. I find this fascinating. It's a use case that probably never came up during evolution, yet works reasonably
pYQAJ6Zm 10y ago
Before I came to live at a dense urban area, I couldn’t imagine myself wearing headphones outdoors. How quickly I changed. There is just too much noise, too many distractions, and wearing headphones with some of my preferred music helps in effectively ignoring all of that. So I joined the herd, and now wear earphones practically all the time I spend outside if alone. I take care not to use a high volume, unless I’m in a reasonably safe setting, like on a train. Listening to music instead of the traffic, people talking too loud, advertisements, etc., is great, but only as long as it doesn’t pose a safety risk.
anotheryou 10y ago
And a day before he probably complained about the sensory overload in cities or people reading while walking. Headphones are perfect for entertainment while commuting.
levisdown 10y ago
Headphones, earphones are popular and portable, so they are everywhere: http://www.crazysales.com.au/headphones-earphones/ http://www.crazysales.com.au/headphones-earphones/

62 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

When drinking tea, I drink tea. [1] When coding, I code. When listening to music, I listen to music. When sitting on a plane, I sit on a plane. Resist the urge to distract yourself and see what happens.[2] [1] There is the story of the Zen student whose teacher taught him "When drinking tea, just drink tea." The same student later discovered his teacher drinking tea and reading the newspaper. When confronted the teacher said, "When drinking tea and reading the newspaper, just drink tea and read the newspaper." [2] I believe that boredom and frustration tolerance are important life skills worth developing. Also I have found that many things that at first seem boring become more interesting if you pay close attention to them.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
logicalDuck 10y ago
When you're drinking tea you're allowing the hot water to distract you from the ingredients of the tea, you should really just chew the herbs. All experience is blended, it's good to enjoy what you're doing fully but that doesn't preclude adding additional things to the experience. Sometimes the addition of those things allow you to have a fresh look at the situation you're in. Just sit on the grass, sit on the grass and read a book, sit on the grass and listen to music. You could mark two of those situations as distracts or redefine them as unique blended experiences to enjoy. I prefer the latter. Mindfulness practice is valuable though, I just think blended experiences like blended foods are equally valuable. I'd rather have a sandwich then separately eat bread, lettuce, cheese, tomato and mustard.
- gerbilly 10y ago
  The teaching to "Just drink tea" is a training principle. The reason that the teacher can read the news paper and drink tea, is that he's completed his training.[1] Most of us never attempt any such training though. In my comment I wasn't attempting to make a moral or aesthetic prescription. I was just pointing out that training the ability to focus on doing one thing is worthwhile. [1] Also most Buddhist teachings reveal several layers of meaning when actually attempted. You are supposed to _try_ and sit and drink tea only, and see what happens, and what that reveals about your mind.

dijit 10y ago

this comes off like such rambling with no real point to it. I suppose if I had to try and find his points they would be: * "headphones are bad because they cause us to be isolated" * "Millennials are seeing themselves as hard done by" The second point might not be what the author means though, but the former has strong tones throughout the piece. I do not agree, headphones are a way of having some level of privacy in an increasingly crowded and public world. We are expected to use public transport, for the good of our wallets and the good of the planet. However those public transport machines are especially loud (Bus engines are incredible) and we're beholden to the whim of shitty teenagers playing rap music at 100db from tiny speakers. This is before I mention the increasingly popular open-office work environments, which put a large number of people in a room together for 8-10 hours every day. I do not want to hear Debbie finalising that sales call and then talking shit to her colleague about the guy from third.. I want to get my work done and focus. Headphones are the only way to do that in a modern work environment.

JamesBaxter 10y ago
Amanda Petrusich is a woman. I'm more surprised that podcasts and audiobooks aren't mentioned. I only listen to music at the gym and at work. When I'm travelling I like to listen to stuff that will push me but when I'm working I just use music to block the noise.
- abstractbeliefs 10y ago
  While it's inconsiderate to the author to get her pronouns right, does her being a man or woman have any bearing on the article or the above criticism of it?
  - JamesBaxter 10y ago
    Not especially, I was going to make the 2nd part of my comment regardless. I am however trying to consider the author more as I read online though in this case I don't think it adds any additional context.
Can_Not 10y ago

tartuffe78 10y ago

Seems to assume everyone is listening to music, I'd bet it's closer to a 50/50 split between music and podcasts.

lsaferite 10y ago
I'd say that split is VERY regional dependent and that you are likely overestimating the percentage of podcast listeners as a whole.
pbhjpbhj 10y ago
I often listen to FM radio, BBC Radio 4 which is primarily speech.
redrummr 10y ago
I've still to meet a person who listens to podcasts. And I know a few techies here in Sydney. Might be more of an American thing? Not sure.

durzagott 10y ago

Interesting the author made no mention of hearing damage and the impact it could have on the younger generation. I wonder if it was a deliberate decision to avoid a common debate or if she just didn't consider it.

PeterStuer 10y ago

For the most part the shared auditive environment is polluted beyond believe. Loud 24x7 traffic, degenerates with tiny phone speakers blaring, no holds barred shouting across the street ... The only way to keep some sanity is to shut it out. It is not the people donning headphones that are a-social, it is those that make it necessary to wear one that should be blamed.

jessaustin 10y ago
Yes, one doubts the author would prefer it if we all traded in our headphones for boomboxes.
- elbear 10y ago
  Why should those be the only options?

spodek 10y ago

Here in New York City, 90% of subway riders may be listening to headphones or engrossed in their smartphones, playing games, checking email, etc. I have a feeling it's cut down on altercations and fights, maybe even panhandling and performers. I wonder if there's any data on it or if a similar effect happens elsewhere.

jessaustin 10y ago
Yet the wardens seem desperate to keep those items out of prisons...
- cholantesh 10y ago
  I think the argument is that earphones could be used as a garroting device.
  - Wohlf 10y ago
    As well as cellphones being used to send orders to lackeys outside of prison.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      Yeah sure the modern personal electronic device has lots of features you wouldn't want in a prison. But everything in prison has been modified for prison use: beds, toothbrushes, toilets, etc. Electronic devices can also be modified to fit the prison environment. Prisoners who are busy playing Angry Birds aren't busy plotting angry mayhem.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    Would be interesting if they designed a pair of earbuds that had a deliberately weak cable so it couldn't be used as a weapon
    - kwhitefoot 10y ago
      It might be better to design a prison that actually rehabilitated people. Then perhaps there might be a little less violence.

xchip 10y ago

This article has been published every year since the headphones were invented. Before the headphones the isolation device were books, a thing that would make us detach from reality and turn us crazy (this is the main plot of Don Quixote, a novel written in 1620)

qntty 10y ago
This is also one of the main points of this article.
- xchip 10y ago
  which one exactly? I quickly scanned though it and didn't find anything interesting but the usual cliches
  - oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
    > It turns out that observers have been fretting about headphones—and the disconnection they facilitate—for decades. Early Walkman prototypes included a second headphone jack so you could share your tunes with a buddy ...
- saturdaysaint 10y ago
  It's amazing how few commenters seem to show any comprehension of the article.
  - xchip 10y ago
    No wonder given low wheat/chaff ratio this article has. Most people are working and can only quickly scan through it trying to find the main points. If the smart people in ycombinator get the wrong point it probably means the article was poorly written.
    - saturdaysaint 10y ago
      Most of the comments seem indicative of an exceptionally poor scan, or at least a scan optimized for a Vox article or Reddit ELIF thread. I also scanned the article and thought it was obvious that the point was far afield from "headphones/technology bad" - just read the first sentence of the first four paragraphs and the shape of the argument is pretty easy to intuit. I don't have time to get into the meaning of a sharp uptick in headphone usage either, but shitcomments that are obviously reactions to the photo caption are the real chaff here.

pystack 10y ago

When I code, headphones block out distractions and music gets me in the right mentality. When refactoring or debugging code, I like fast paced with action-packed lyrics. Dragonforce Through the Fire and Flames, Darude Sandstorm, Linkin Park, Eminem Til I Collapse When writing new code, I like slow paced with thoughtful or romantic[1] lyrics. Joni Mitchell, Mozart, Carpenters I've also started to put the song on repeat on the background. I recommend ListenOnRepeat. [1] http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/psy-methoden/methodenlehre/Loveandsex.pdf http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/psy-methoden/methodenlehre/Lov...

teekert 10y ago

I listen to podcasts usually, makes my bike commute of 25 min seem to go much faster while I'm listening to No Agenda or the Linux Action Show. I do notice though that whenever I take them off, usually because I already have a head full of thoughts, there is a soothing effect. I think the constant flow of information is nice as a distraction but makes one much less mindful of other things. The brain does not seem to get the periods of wandering thoughts it craves from time to time. Constant information intake seems to make me less friendly to people, makes me stare and smile less. It makes me enjoy the beauty around me less. So I started to take them off more often, but it feels like I'm fighting an addiction when I do.

rtpg 10y ago
Similar feelings. Podcasts in particular are tricky because they do require active participation, in a way. Even if it doesn't feel like it, parsing and paying attention to what people say is work I've found that listening to random music ("I'm feeling lucky" on Google Music) is much more soothing than listening to any podcast... But walking around and listening to your surroundings are a good way to cool off, and kinda forget about difficulties. Listening to the traffic go by can be hypnotic....
legooolas 10y ago
Personally I prefer to be able to hear cars and people when I'm cycling, so that I'm less likely to hit anything or be run over. Do you not feel it makes you more likely to have an accident?
- teekert 10y ago
  Well we do bike mostly on biking lanes here in the Netherlands (no chance of contact with a car) and we have a very biking oriented culture in general. Also here the cars are guilty (car driver can claim the damage with the bikers insurance afterwards though) unless proven that they had no responsibility what so ever (bikers and pedestrian are so called "weaker traffic participants"). It may make car drivers more cautious, or perhaps the fact that almost everybody is on a bike at some point makes them more careful. Also, on roundabouts (there are a quite some) bikes always have priority as well. In any case, I have never heard of any accidents. It is known though that here, when the schools start after a holiday there is an increase in accidents, this is probably related to car drivers needing to become used again of the high amount of bikers on the road. Here is a nice example of a typical rush hour, the red lane is only for bikes, of course everybody is very careful at intersections :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-AbPav5E5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-AbPav5E5M (by the way the bus also has it's own lane in this example, and everybody knows: bus drivers don't mess around.)

harveywi 10y ago

Reminds me of the seashell ear-thimbles from Fahrenheit 451.

cholantesh 10y ago
Such an evocative image. Stays with me much more than Clarke's Newspad in 2001.

coldpie 10y ago

> Is the ubiquity of headphones just another emblem of catastrophic social decline, edging us even deeper into narcissism and unsociability? No. * closes tab

georgebarnett 10y ago
Maybe the ubiquity of headphones is telling us that our shared spaces are too loud and full of background noise. Think piped music, announcements, adverts, engines, etc etc..
- sangnoir 10y ago
  > Maybe the ubiquity of headphones is telling us that our shared spaces are too loud Or maybe the shared spaces are plain boring. I don't know what the author expects people to do on flights, but I'm not going to be twiddling thumbs for any flight longer than 30 minutes. Substitute headphones for paperbacks or newspapers, and the rant would still be relevant (for the lack of a better word).
  - k-mcgrady 10y ago
    I'm not sure if it was intentional or not but it's interesting all of your alternatives are solitary activities? How about talking to the people you are travelling with (family/friends)? Seems to me that's the kind of thing the article is hinting at.
    - sangnoir 10y ago
      > I'm not sure if it was intentional or not but it's interesting all of your alternatives are solitary activities? How about talking to the people you are travelling with (family/friends) It was intentional, and my point was that the author wasn't really railing against headphones exactly: humans have been engaging in solitary activity in public for eons, and the author is attempting to headfake readers into believing it's a recent phenomenon. > How about talking to the people you are travelling When traveling with friends/family, I usually talk to them. With strangers it's a dire gamble: on one hand, I choose my travel music/movie/book ahead of time and they are guaranteed to be interesting. On the other hand, the gent or lady the next seat over could be a great conversationalist or they could be really annoying and I won't tell them to shut up for civility's sake.

fdomig 10y ago

I might just not like to hear the loud outside world and block it with headphones.

deleted 10y ago
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HemanHeartYou 10y ago

>Portable audio, then, is likely more a reflection than an engine of our egotism I'm just going to leave that brilliant observation right there. :^)

pgrote 10y ago

"In 2012, the headphone industry saw a quick thirty-two-per-cent leap in revenue " And once Apple removes the headphone jack, the revenue will spike again.

draw_down 10y ago

People on the bus are assholes who just play audio from their speakers. People in my (open plan, of course) office are assholes who have impromptu meetings and boorish conversations all day. People on planes bring their screaming children. Headphones are a necessity.

sevenless 10y ago

A reason that some European countries use in recent laws that ban women from wearing full-face burkas/niqabs, is it stops the wearers interacting/communicating with others. The same logic implies we should ban public wear of headphones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering "The key argument supporting this proposal is that face-coverings ... [are] a social hindrance within a society which relies on facial recognition and expression in communication. ... the European Court of Human Rights upheld the French law on 1 July 2014, accepting the argument of the French government that the law was based on "a certain idea of living together.""

Tehnix 10y ago
>as it stops the wearers interacting with others Are you sure that's the reason? I'd imagine it would have something to do with the laws (at least here in Denmark) around it being illegal to be fully masked.
- lloeki 10y ago
  You got it reversed, this is the justification that has been put forward for the law to come into existence in France. The basic idea is that non-verbal face-to-face communication is culturally expected as a very basic and fundamental part of our social interactions, however inconsequential they seem. An example: bump into someone on the bus, and you'll instantly look at their face to know if they're hurt or annoyed or sorry or vindictive without a word, and can proceed on with appropriate verbal communication. In other cultures maybe arm language suffices but in a European one it creates unease at best not to see the other's full face. This is basically why even ill people don't wear masks around here (when it would really help not spreading diseases like flu) which is, I hear, basically a given in Asian cultures. The French government decided to make a statement about it and declared that masking your face is illegal (barring a couple exceptions including medical reasons, safety, and cultural†† events) for cultural and security† reasons. † Obviously terrorists vet in favor of RFC3514 and choose to wear masks in public and so everyone is now safer what you didn't think of the children did you? †† Otherwise that would make for an interesting conundrum
10y ago

zhte415 10y ago

I find wearing headphones decreases local spacial / social awareness hugely. This makes things like crossing a road dangerous.

pdkl95 10y ago

> “Do people really like music this much?” Yes. /me checks that the Grado SR80e is positioned properly and plays The Soft Moon ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgwGEG10WIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgwGEG10WIY )

ungzd 10y ago

In Russia, lots of people used headphones about 5 years ago. Now I see people with headphones very rarely. Also, I think interest to music is in decline here.

diydsp 10y ago

Initial comments on this article indicate it elicited a persecuted response: Commenters are defending their use of headphones. This was perhaps due to the tone of the article (phrases like "catastrophic social decline" don't help...) and/or the tone of media in general which treats every topic as life and death. The existence of all the headphones though raises more interesting questions that are fun and interesting to think about in a sci-fi way than "is it acceptable for you to react in this way?" There are hints of it in the article, but they don't come through well. The key questions are mostly of curiosity. First, there is simply "what are people listening to?" Is it always music, what kinds of podcasts, meditations, lectures, spy recordings? I am particularly interested in shared experiences via headphones. It is okay in my book to not want to hear unwanted machine and person noise. Now what are the creative possibilities for making, e.g. mini groups of shared listening? In a sense, we are all sharing the same podcast, albeit time-shifted. What about group music-composing on subway trains? What about several people on the same bus or walking path to listening to the same thing together at the same time? What about historical tours, etc. This could be fun. And having all these headphones around might actually help it happen.

EdiX 10y ago

Least interesting thing I have read this year. I'm starting to think that use of the word 'performative' is a dead giveaway for pointless navel-gazing.

oneeyedpigeon 10y ago

I sometimes listen to music, through headphones, when I'm travelling on my own on a train. Since I regularly make the same journey, it can get a little boring. I'm not always in the mood for work and I don't always carry a book/magazine with me; music is an excellent alternative. I wouldn't dream of playing that music out loud, inflicting it upon everyone else. That's the boring explanation. It may lack the keen social commentary that the article speculates on, but it happens to be true.

6stringmerc 10y ago

>“Do people really like music this much?” I have wondered, incredulously, while tallying endless white earplugs. Does the New Yorker really pay good, honest money for such laughably sheltered premises? It's no accident Taylor Swift's take-home last year was $170 million. Sometimes people wear headphones simply to tune out the grocery store's bland Adele-centric easy listening. Loving music is pretty much a human being thing.

gmarx 10y ago
One could argue that clearly that is exactly how much people like music at that particular time and place, assuming she can distinguish those listening to music from those not

circa 10y ago

I was just talking about this with a friend yesterday. So crazy this article just popped up. She snagged some headphones on Prime day too. haha.

kstenerud 10y ago

I've found that the more urban and compressed the environment, the more headphones you see. I started doing it too when riding the bus or working in my "open plan" office, to the point that I wore them on average 10 hours a day. Now I live in the countryside, my nearest neighbor is a mile away, and I haven't used headphones in 6 months, nor have I even thought about them until reading this article. And I still don't feel like using them.

cs2818 10y ago

Perhaps I am just paranoid but I don't enjoy the complete blocking of environmental sound cues that occurs when wearing most headphones. It would be nice to have more headphones which focus on delivering an ambient noise passthrough mode.

gmarx 10y ago

When you listen on headphones, sound in the middle of the mix, which might seem to come from the middle of and slightly behind home speakers, appears to come from the middle of your skull. I find this fascinating. It's a use case that probably never came up during evolution, yet works reasonably

pYQAJ6Zm 10y ago

Before I came to live at a dense urban area, I couldn’t imagine myself wearing headphones outdoors. How quickly I changed. There is just too much noise, too many distractions, and wearing headphones with some of my preferred music helps in effectively ignoring all of that. So I joined the herd, and now wear earphones practically all the time I spend outside if alone. I take care not to use a high volume, unless I’m in a reasonably safe setting, like on a train. Listening to music instead of the traffic, people talking too loud, advertisements, etc., is great, but only as long as it doesn’t pose a safety risk.

anotheryou 10y ago

And a day before he probably complained about the sensory overload in cities or people reading while walking. Headphones are perfect for entertainment while commuting.

levisdown 10y ago

Headphones, earphones are popular and portable, so they are everywhere: http://www.crazysales.com.au/headphones-earphones/ http://www.crazysales.com.au/headphones-earphones/