The Sounds of Silence

I got one of those iPod Shuffle thingies, the little flat square MP3 player not much wider than my thumb.

It represents something of a quantum leap for me, since just the other day I was using last-millennium technology, a portable CD player on a sports belt, and now I have this little thing that can hold the equivalent of dozens of CD's worth of songs, and the little thing is clipped to my shirt, so small that it is actually easy to lose.

No Luddite I -- I heartily approve of the progress, it is a great advance. My inner DJ is always on the job, and he likes having better equipment. But after just a few days of use, it has already got me ruminating over its place in my life.

Adaptation was quick -- I have already learned the "one-bud drop" when someone is talking to me and how to arrange the wires so they won't get snagged. And the controls are intuitive, so tapping it has become second nature. (Though the geek in me, each and every time I tap at the gadget clipped to my shirt, wants to call out, "Picard to Enterprise!") But most interesting to me is that I have already started using it in ways that, if you had asked me a month ago, I would have said were unlikely: while driving, shopping, working in the garden.

I am one of those people who always has a lot going on in his head, and one way to deal with the mental cocktail party is to turn up the music and sing along. So having a wealth of songs easily available is a blessing. But I have to wonder: what about my skills at dealing with silence? Will they decline? Is this gadget the point of a wedge?

Daily, I see many indications that young people are now unable to deal with silence -- forced to unplug, they jitter, they shake, they start drumming their fingers, jingling keys, or kicking something just to have some rhythmic input. And I wonder: will I go there, even wary as I am of the effect?

What will our world be like once a whole generation has become unable to endure silence?

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I've been listening a lot lately (OK, right now, on the iPod) to Alanis Morissette, the asthma-voiced poetess. And she puts it very nicely:

Why are you so petrified of silence? Here, can you handle this:

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Did you think about your bills, your ex, your deadlines, or when you think you're gonna die, or did you long for the next distraction?