Personal media devices

[urbpan]

In the sixties, transistors and batteries made small, portable radios popular. In the seventies, audio tape was reduced and sealed into cartridges, changing the very private, home-based activity of listening to recorded music into a public spectacle open to anyone. Fortunately, in the eighties, miniaturized speakers worn on the head were developed, creating a more polite, yet more antisocial class of public listener.

Then pagers and portable telephones began to appear, not just carried by drug dealers and surgeons, but by ordinary ostentatious people as well. Soon, personal phones were ubiquitous, and private noise once again became a public problem.

Now music is recorded and replayed by computer, enjoyed via tiny white speakers nestled into one’s earwax. Almost as soon as this technology was developed, the threat of converting these devices, as well as cell phones, into video monitors has emerged. In no time the public spaces are going to be crowded with somnambulant viewers clutching little glowing screens. Heads down, they will stagger about the city, watching videos of practical jokes, snuff films, pornography, and endless mandatory commercials.

Comments

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

In the seventies, audio tape was reduced and sealed into cartridges, changing the very private, home-based activity of listening to recorded music into a public spectacle open to anyone.

Double dumb-ass on you!

Some thoughts...

[http://users.livejournal.com/purplebunnie_/]

I don't own a cell phone. Never have, and likely never will.

Payphones are getting harder and harder to find... and most of them don't work.

I own a boring CD player that's broken somehow... they just don't make 'em like they used to. I miss my first sony. Bloody thing lasted for 5 years (I'm rough on everything) and wouldn't skip unless I dropped it standing up.

We watch DVDs on the compy, but don't have a VHS player right now. We'll likely try to get one when we go home for christmas.

I've a hand-held tape recorder that desperatly needs to be cleaned, and I had people in London and Prague record random stuff on it for me.

Remeber the 'talkboys'? Gads, I miss those things.

And I still want a gameboy. Mine died in a fire a long time ago, and I've never replaced it. Need before greed, as it were.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Soon enough we will have interactive multimedia devices encorporated into normal looking glasses, which will turn everyone in public spaces into zombies, talking to themselves, staring off into space, and nearly missing all of the world around them.

I jsut got a cellphone, mostly because I was moving and had to change my service anyway, and it does make it a little easier to find my husband sometimes... But I'm really not actually fan of the things. I have a real tolerance/hate relationship with mine. I do enjoy the feature that allows me to talk to it and have it talk to me (my "ringer" is nice computer lady telling me "Call from David" or whomever.) I guess I'm just a luddite with technolust.

[ms-cantrell.livejournal.com]

i only listen to my mp3 while running. i refused the software to turn my cell phone into a portable media device- it's still just a phone, despite having video, recording, and music capabilities. when it's just me, i often leave the phone at home or in the car charger. but when i have my kids with me, i have my phone, too.

i really hope that we don't start watching videos on portable devices the way we now listen to music as we commute. too depressing to think about. however, up here we do have many many who walk while reading books. i'm sure a tv enthusiast would say that there's not much difference.