Urban Strategy
The appeal of personal experience management seems to be strongest in cities. As Hosokawa puts it, "To think about is to reflect on the urban itself: alkman as urban strategy, as urban sonic/musical device." The very nature of an urban environment is such that potential for chance encounters and unpredictable human actions are constant. Whereas your attention is fair game while simply walking down the street, riding on the subway, or sitting on a bench to rest, when you do the same activities while listening to music, you appear busy and fully engaged already, making any attempt at communication effectively an interruption. Those who might otherwise be willing to interrupt may be further deterred from interaction by the fact that there’s a good chance they won’t even be heard, rendering their effort futile or worse--embarrassing. Even if they are heard, it’s easy for you to act as if they weren’t. Headphones enable listeners to float through public areas in a protective bubble, actively tuning in or out who or what they want. Awkward exchanges with acquaintances are less obligational, panhandlers are less likely to bother you, and the cacophony of traffic can be subdued by a pop song.
One specific effect noted by both Patton and Bull is what Bull calls "auditized looking," the ability of those listening to a personal stereo to make or escape eye contact with others in ways they wouldn't otherwise. Traditional messages carried by eye contact are to some extent dissolved by the music's protective bubble, the listener seen as unavailable.
Read more about this topic: Walkman Effect
Famous quotes containing the words urban and/or strategy:
“And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there.... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“... the generation of the 20’s was truly secular in that it still knew its theology and its varieties of religious experience. We are post-secular, inventing new faiths, without any sense of organizing truths. The truths we accept are so multiple that honesty becomes little more than a strategy by which you manage your tendencies toward duplicity.”
—Ann Douglas (b. 1942)