Personal media devices

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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.