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The isolation of the iPod people (pg. 2)
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| Lira |
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
I've had similar thoughts about iPods. I just discussed this in MD but...
I think what's happening is a gradual "depersonalization" of a lot of things, meaning fewer and fewer requirements for face to face interaction. In this thread I talked about how it relates to the dance music scene, but I think it has wider implications as well.
Basically I think that a great number of "wired" people are retreating into little ultra-personalized shells made up of entertaining, ethereal, disposable information.
This affects how people buy and listen to music, how they buy other things, how they meet new people and relate to the ones they already know, how they do business, and lots of other things. All kinds of relations and attachments become more casual and less permanent, and people are more easily driven to distraction. Attention spans narrow, and people start to lose their patience in the face of any inconvenience. They might even be disturbed at being alone with their own thoughts, at being cut off from the incessant flow of digital information. |
But, hasn't this depersonalisation process began long before the iPod was invented? I remember a professor saying that before music could be recorded, you would listen to music only in social gatherings (unless you played it yourself). Once the record player was invented, you no longer had to go to a concert in order to listen to your favourite song.
And, this applies to most other forms of art. Now that literacy is more widespread, families don't gather around one of the members to listen to books. Thanks to the internet, we can now have access to paintings that we would have never seen otherwise. This all reflects a more important part of urban life: the emphasis on individualism.
My girlfriend lives in the rural area. It's incredible how everyone knows everything about everyone else there. You often find old ladies (who else?) knitting in the city fair, talking about what's going on in the town. Can you imagine that in a big city? Well, I can't.
My point is that nothing new is going on. We're now heading to a future in which your body is not a limiting factor - you won't need to go to a rock concert to listen to rock, you won't need to go to school in order to learn and so on. The individual will be free to pursue its interests to such an extent that interpersonal bonds might become quite different from what we're used to. After all, just because I've never met most of you in real life, that doesn't mean I don't care about the lot of you... if I could, I'd meet you all :) |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
But, hasn't this depersonalisation process began long before the iPod was invented? |
Yes.
Human intimacy replaced with screens and ephemeral bits of data.
It is more convenient, though. |
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| Lira |
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
Human intimacy replaced with screens and ephemeral bits of data. |
Wouldn't you say that human intimacy has been enhanced rather than replaced by screens? We can now listen/see to our friends whenever we want (blogs/social websites), listen to our music whenever we want, read books whenever we want... and, on top of that, we can still meet up our friends, go to concerts and talk about a book with a friends with whom we share some interests. |
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| mezzir |
- that sounds interesting but i'm tired now and not gonna read it
- someone remind me tomorrow
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| iammesol |
| The availability to find and converse with people you share interest with has become amazingly increased, but at the cost of actually interacting with them. |
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| Lira |
| quote: | Originally posted by mezzir
- that sounds interesting but i'm tired now and not gonna read it
- someone remind me tomorrow
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:stongue: |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
Wouldn't you say that human intimacy was enhanced rather than replaced by screens? |
No, not really. I suppose it could be in some cases, but I would wager that as a general rule it serves as a substitute for offline life.
I don't necessarily see any of this as a problem, since offline life can be so limited and crappy in many ways, especially if you have unpopular tastes and interests.
I mostly suck at face to face stuff, so the net has been pretty good for me; but I don't know, maybe it was just a convenient excuse to avoid getting better at offline stuff. |
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| MiAmigo |
| Spare us all the paragraphs and just cut to the chase in one sentence or less please... thank-you |
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| mezzir |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
:stongue: |
- seriously dude
- it still cracks me up :p
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | Originally posted by MiAmigo
Spare us all the paragraphs and just cut to the chase in one sentence or less please... thank-you |
Leave, alt. |
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| Lira |
| quote: | Originally posted by MiAmigo
Bears in the underwear and Michael Jackson pedophiles. Real deep here. |
| quote: | Originally posted by MiAmigo
Spare us all the paragraphs and just cut to the chase in one sentence or less please... thank-you |
You want depth in less than one sentence, huh?
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
No, not really. I suppose it could be in some cases, but I would wager that as a general rule it serves as a substitute for offline life.
I don't necessarily see any of this as a problem, since offline life can be so limited and crappy in many ways, especially if you have unpopular tastes and interests.
I mostly suck at face to face stuff, so the net has been pretty good for me; but I don't know, maybe it was just a convenient excuse to avoid getting better at offline stuff. |
I see... hmm... I don't know, because I do have unpopular tastes and interests, and I'm a friendly person off-line (which seems to be a bit of a contradiction :p), I have always thanked the interent for making it possible for me to "expand my possible world".
But maybe you're right. And, if you are, I wonder whether this lack of intimacy has not been present long before we got immersed in this online world. |
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| Lilith |
I don't own an iPod, I've nearly run over a couple of iTards that stagger out into traffic as pedestrians, oblivious to the world around them though, at some point they will meet someone with worse brakes than mine and hopefully readdress this habit.
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
You want depth in less than one sentence, huh? |
Ban
Hows that for being succinct? ;) |
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