The Future is Hear
The past couple weeks have provided some interesting noise for thought.
Although I’ve always thought of our culture as primarily visual, a confluence of events has convinced me that the attention of my ears is more hotly contested than my eyes. Here’s a few of the events that brought this to the fore, out of the background noise:
As soon as they came out, I picked up one of the little iPod Nanos. I’d avoided the bulky form factor of previous iPods, but the Nano really suits me. Now I walk around with about 120 albums worth of music in my pocket.
Once I fired up the accompanying software, I discovered iTunes’ sharing feature, which allows you to play music from other local network users’ collections. That provided access to a considerable quantity of additional audio material at work.
Soon after that, I was introduced to the magic of OurTunes, a Java client that allows you to not just listen to others’ music, but to snag it, so that you can load it onto your own iPod. So I did some plundering. It was just like the fine old days of AudioGalaxy, when I sampled all kinds of different reggae artists before going out and actually buying CDs from the artists I liked.
I also started looking for podcasts: RSS feeds of regular audio programs. I found Negativland’s weekly “Over the Edge” radio program out of Berkeley’s KPFA, and several really exceptional sets of Dharma talks. Suddenly, I found myself having real difficulty keeping up with the flood of several hours of incoming audio programs per day!
As if all that wasn’t enough, my employer decided to reward us by giving us receivers and a free year of Sirius satellite radio. While radio has limited appeal to me (since I don’t spend long hours in a car or anything), they do have one feature that piques my interest: live broadcasts of virtually every NBA game. Of course, that’s one of those things that, like NASCAR, might be appealing in the short term, but probably has an overall negative impact on my quality of life.
With all this audio-related stuff going on, I find there’s more things competing for my auditory space than my visual space, which seems curious to me. I’m not sure that’s ever been the case before.
And, of course, there’s the irony of Apple introducing a video iPod at this time, as well. I’m curious to see whether it takes off or not. Is there something inherent about audio that makes it more desirable to port around than video? I guess we’ll just have to wait and… hear.