Little white earbuds
*Disclaimer: I am a conflicted owner of Airpods, still figuring out how to properly use them in public.
People wearing headphones, going about their business in cities is nothing new. Man has been able to overlay his own soundtrack over his world since the advent of the Sony Walkman. Obnoxiously large, over-the ear cupped headphones have existed for decades and could not be a bigger statement of self reclusion.
I want to make a case, however, that the proliferation of Apple’s latest and greatest Airpods are different. Their design is certainly sexy- they sneakily blend into our profiles as if they are a part of our bodies, but I believe that very design creates new implications that we should be wary of when it comes to the role of technology on our society. Whereas the traditional white, corded earbuds or bluetooth earpieces were a conscious decision and clear signal to the outside world, these earbuds don’t force us to make a decision of whether we are going to tune out or be present in our current environment. With Airpods, however, we are pushed into what we believe is a constant state of optionality between one or the other.
The ease of which I can context switch between making a call, listening to music, or simply listening to nothing is certainly a benefit to those who wear them, but what about everyone else around them? Outside observers must wonder whether someone is crazily talking to himself, on a call, jamming out, or simply just walking with earbuds in. To the user, the default state is disconnection from the surrounding environment, but it’s always easy to reconnect. I’ve even seen people by themselves in a park working with them on, proceed to have a friend join in, and converse without ever removing them.
But real life doesn’t work that way nor should it. We don’t get the freedom to pick and choose what’s serendipitously occurring around us. You walk down the street and you could be approached by anyone or lured by anything that piques your interest. With Airpods, it’s become easier to omit an air of coldness, a constant lack of approachability, but that doesn’t change the fact that the individual lacks the power to control his environment.
On the internet, our information feeds are algorithmically filtered to present us the content we are most likely to engage with and that’s fine. That’s the internet economy- it exists within own world that’s divorced from the serendipitous properties I mentioned earlier.
What I fear is that this very paradigm of an echo chamber is starting to apply to our offline lives; the real world. Who wants to live in a society where serendipity is limited to the next song Spotify will queue up for you on your way to work? The reality is that the forces of nature will always clash with this behavior. No matter how advanced our society becomes or how crafty Apple gets in its design, there will always be tension between what technology promises and the physical forces of our nature. The best technology should bend to those forces, not fight them.
