No smart comments from me this time – just pushing a good article about one persons perception of the impact of the iPod et al. (needs a login – get one from Bug Me Not)

A similar article would probably have been written about 20 years ago regarding the Walkman, but there are still a couple of strong points that resonate through, as they would have done 25 years ago, or 50 years ago, come to that…

“…Brant admits to the pressures of such superrichness. He feels obliged to listen for all he’s worth. He doesn’t deny that he may not be listening as well as he once did. If you can listen to everything, you may end up hearing nothing. I sometimes wish half of Brant’s iPod were filled with blank spaces. Music cannot begin or end without silence in front and behind. Unending music is not music.”

I recall Ralf Hutter from Kraftwerk making similar comments in an interview once; he made a point of ensuring that he listened to no music for a period of each day – something I do too, I have to say, although maybe not so consciously: It surprises me sometimes when I notice I’ve been working for a few hours and have completely forgotten to put any music on…

This article was posted on Thursday, 11 November 2004 at 9:51 am in the Web commentary category. You can leave a comment, or Trackback to this article.