25 thoughts on “The Invasion”

  1. Two comments:

    1. I much prefer the earbud people to the boom box toters of a previous generation.

    2. I find the inability to be away from a cell phone for any longer than it takes to shower a far more disturbing trend.

  3. When I was in my long mass transit commute phase of life, I would usually wear headphones even if they were not plugged in. It only takes a couple encounters with drugged “conversationalists” to realize that putting out the do not disturb sign is the best method for a relaxed commute. Choosing to bypass some of the frequent encounters with the obviously deranged one is subjected to on mass transit in no way implies they are afraid to be alone with their thoughts.

  4. I do have to wonder about someone who seems afraid to be alone with their own thoughts.

    I assume this means that you object to the author’s take? I certainly do. I don’t see any reason why listening to music precludes “being alone with your own thoughts.” It’s quite possible to parse the day’s problems/issues or exercise the subconscious with day dreaming with a sound track.

    What gets my goat are the blow hards who think their conversation is so important that they loudly share it with everybody in the enclosed space. That’s really when my earbuds come out – to isolate me from the human personal thought countermeasure jammers.

  6. Yes, there are some people who seem to need constant stimulation due to short attention spans. Remember the old show “Maimi Vice”? I read that they changed scenes every few seconds in order to keep the audience’s attention (and this was in the early 1980s).

    That said, I prefer listening to music of my choice in a crowded place to overhearing people’s private and not so private conversations. A major city can provide too much stimulation, leading to frayed nerves and higher blood pressure. Music of my own choice is preferable to the din of noise that surrounds us.

    When I was in London a couple Saturdays ago, it was somewhat amusing and annoying to see the number of people wandering around looking at the screen of their smart phones. Even without earplugs, they were pretty oblivious to their surroundings, often obstructing the flow of pedestrian traffic. Another related group proved they couldn’t walk while talking on a cell phone any better than most people who drive and use the phone.

    Good bumper sticker: “Shut up and drive”

  8. Smart phones are just an intermediate phase. Eventually there will be wireless implants at birth. Twitters and blog keeping will start as soon babies speak think their first word.

    Really, watching how kids of this generation MUST be in constant communication with their friends, especially when making decisions, makes me wonder if we are going to become the Borg Star Trek warned us about.

  9. I have been retired for five years. Back when i was working some of my co-workers would listen to music or talk radio while at their work stations. i never liked to do it because i felt it cut me off from my surroundings. i wanted to know if someone came by to say something to me. i was a programmer and felt that music or radio was distracting.

  10. I’m a programmer; music usually cuts into my concentration. I can do boring stuff while listening to music, but not complicated stuff. Same with driving a car–if I’m going somewhere I’ve been to before I can have the radio on, if I’m going somewhere new I need it off.

  11. “Really, watching how kids of this generation MUST be in constant communication with their friends, especially when making decisions, makes me wonder if we are going to become the Borg Star Trek warned us about.”

    Can’t recall the title or author, but I remember an SF story in Analog, regarding some additional wireless technology that was making people even more ‘connected’ and zombie-ish than usual. One of the characters at the end noted that we may be creating a new class of people who won’t ever go any significant distance into space. Not because of radiation, microgravity, or the usual physiological and psychological suspects, but only because increasing speed-of-light delays would make ‘real-time’ separation from everything important to them, intolerable….

    Of course, those of us still accustomed to delayed gratification and willing to wait hours for simple e-mail, who know that great things were done even before radio, much less the Internet, would still be fine out there.

  12. My concentration level varies considerably. At times that band that makes stars go nova in the hitchhikers guide wouldn’t distract me. At other times I have to ask the mice to keep it down.

    The bifurcation of man. Earth becomes the borg, the rest can’t be assimilated.

  14. I’m a programmer and while the quiet is better if I’m working on something difficult, music can help the time go by faster when doing mundane grunt work. Human chatter is far more distracting than music, especially multiple audible conversations. Sadly, my company moved recently and we all went from 1 and 2-person offices to a cube farm/”team room” environment. Noise-cancelling headphones/earbuds are a lifesaver!

    “Team rooms” are glass-walled rooms that all open to the interior cube farm, have 8-12 people, each with 1 roll-around table (not even a proper desk, just a frickin’ table on wheels), 1 chair, and 1 2-drawer with a padded top that doubles as our “guest chair”. And 1 double-sided whiteboard shared by everybody. We got f*****. No, I’m not bitter. Why do you ask? 🙁

  15. I do think that there are some people who can’t handle the sounds of silence.

    One encounters this on a New York City subway … how?

    I suspect the only way is to have John Cage’s 4’33” playing on a continuous loop through … earbuds.

  16. I am old enough to remember when this article was about “those people on their Walkmans, oblivious to their surroundings, living in their own little world.” You remember Walkman’s — those clunky things the size of airport best-sellers, with the headphones (not earbuds). The ones that played cassette tapes? Remember cassette tapes?

    As for the kids and their annoying social groups, they always did that, only they used to have to physically go and then stay in the place where the phone was. But don’t you remember the endless complaining by grownups about “you kids are on the phone too much!” Nothing has changed. The gadgets just got smaller and sleeker and more portable.

  17. As an aside, why would I want to interact on a New York City subway? Last time I did that, I was concerned about too much interaction with my fellow humans, namely, getting mugged. If earbuds kept that from happening, I’d have worn them then.

  18. PS: I forgot to add that I used to listen to my Walkman (later my portable cd player, and later my mp3 player which I still have) when I took the bus everywhere. Far from somehow alienating me from my own thoughts, the music helped me shut out the distracting world and concentrate on my thoughts. As for not wanting to hear “the sounds of silence,” I do like a nice quiet environment, but I lived in the city, where silence isn’t what I heard when I took off my earphones.

  19. The concept of using earbuds or a book to shut out the fellow people in our society really says a lot about parts of our culture. At least in some small way that anti-social behavior will bleed over into other aspects of social interaction.

    It is a foreign concept where I live but we use personal transportation for our primary means of transportation.

    I guess it is always interesting to watch how people act in close quarters with strangers.

  21. I used to be a big fan of radios in the office, and had a little bit of trouble with my then employer over the issue. That changed when the Challenger blew up in 1986. I was secretly listening to the radio when the news came out, and passed the word around the drafting section. Everyone brought out radios and there were no more problems.
    These days, I’ve swung around to wanting as little noise as possible at work, so no radio, sound system or anything of the sort.
    I’m getting old…

  22. When people who are strangers are packed close together in some setting, such as an elevator or a subway, they’ll cease social interaction with each other. People tend to keep quiet and not draw attention to the uncomfortable conditions.

    They tried the same thing with rats, and got similar results. Basically, interaction under those circumstances is a bit of a dominance thing.

    So, if people have extra things like smartphones and earbuds to tune out obnoxious circumstances, like NY city subways, and at the same time interact with people they want to be talking to, it’s a gain, right?

  23. If I consider myself, then I see this differently. Introspective here, because I realize that most really are listening to music. However, I listen to audiobooks, and I’d see listening to them with earbuds in public as no different than reading a book in public. Is it anti-social? Yeah, but to me, no more anti-social than other distractions in decades/centuries past. And, as others have pointed out, constant contact with cellphones has shown that some of these people still communicate with others, if not with the person sitting next to them.

    That said, I do find it annoying at a market being behind someone conducting a transaction with earbuds in their ears. Invariably, they’ll have to get asked the same questions more than once, because they can’t hear the merchant. When you desire to interact with the person in front of you, take the earbuds out.

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