Loneliness is one of the first things ordinary beings spend their money achieving.
My headphones are a personal “Don’t disturb Message.”
The price of self-determination and self-reliance has often been loneliness. Humans generally have always been willing to pay that price. It is easy, and therefore popular, to say that headphones make us anti-social. Money can buy — and modern technology can deliver — the independence that people have always sought. People have always had private thoughts. Headphones have the capacity to make our music like our thoughts. Something that nobody else can hear. Something we can choose to share.
Sound and work what’s the connection?
Personal music devices change our relationship to public spaces. People like to control their environment. Music is the most powerful medium for thought, mood and movement control. Currently with the urban space, the more it’s inhabited, the safer one feels. We are in an error where we feel safe if we can feel people there, but we don’t want to interact with them.
“Minding our own business” so we call it.
“Headphones on world off!”
Personal music creates a shield both for listeners and for those walking around us. Headphones make their own rules of etiquette. We assume that people wearing them are busy or oblivious, so now people wear them to appear busy or oblivious — even without music. Wearing soundless headphones is now a common solution to productivity blocks. In a wreck of people and activity, two plastic pieces connected by a wire create an aura of privacy.
Sound and work what’s the connection?
Headphones carve privacy out of public spaces. Music causes us to relax and reflect and pause. The outcome of relaxation, reflection, and pausing won’t be captured in minute-to-minute productivity metrics. In moments of extreme focus, our attention beams outward, toward the problem, rather than inward, toward the insights. When our minds are at ease — when those alpha waves are rippling through the brain — we’re more likely to direct the spotlight of attention inward,” Jonah Lehrer.
Headphones on world off!
A headphone is a small invisible fence around our minds — making space, creating separation, helping us listen to ourselves.
