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

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.