Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

this comes off like such rambling with no real point to it.

I suppose if I had to try and find his points they would be:

* "headphones are bad because they cause us to be isolated"

* "Millennials are seeing themselves as hard done by"

The second point might not be what the author means though, but the former has strong tones throughout the piece.

I do not agree, headphones are a way of having some level of privacy in an increasingly crowded and public world. We are expected to use public transport, for the good of our wallets and the good of the planet. However those public transport machines are especially loud (Bus engines are incredible) and we're beholden to the whim of shitty teenagers playing rap music at 100db from tiny speakers.

This is before I mention the increasingly popular open-office work environments, which put a large number of people in a room together for 8-10 hours every day.

I do not want to hear Debbie finalising that sales call and then talking shit to her colleague about the guy from third.. I want to get my work done and focus. Headphones are the only way to do that in a modern work environment.

I decided to read the whole article for once before writing it off. There is some interesting information regarding how the rise in headphone use is having an influence on the actual music production.

But I think the overall narrative of the article steers a bit too close for comfort to the old "all you people have your faces in your phones all day long" theme, just directed at headphones. This is expressed a lot more in the initial 3 - 4 paragraphs, which is a shame because most of us will read the first paragraph and then hop on over to comments ;)

She* doesn't seem to have a problem with headphones per se. She's just sorting out the way that they affect how we listen to music. Read the last paragraph:

Ambling down a city street with headphones on—you know, maybe it’s dusk, maybe it’s midsummer, maybe you had a really nice day—is, without a doubt, one of life’s simplest and most perfect joys. Humans have long enjoyed secret communions with sound, and headphones allow for the development of a particularly private and tender relationship. How headphones’ sudden omnipresence might affect the ways in which musicians attempt to communicate with their audiences—how it might dictate what people require of or appreciate about songs; how it will change the way records are made and produced—is, of course, still being sorted out. It seems possible, though, that we are slowly reconfiguring music as a private pleasure—that, in fact, all pleasures, soon, may be private. We are all the lone stars of secret films, narrated by and in our own minds, and we seek out music that validates that position: separate, but forever plugged in.

Amanda Petrusich is a woman.

I'm more surprised that podcasts and audiobooks aren't mentioned. I only listen to music at the gym and at work. When I'm travelling I like to listen to stuff that will push me but when I'm working I just use music to block the noise.

While it's inconsiderate to the author to get her pronouns right, does her being a man or woman have any bearing on the article or the above criticism of it?

Not especially, I was going to make the 2nd part of my comment regardless.

I am however trying to consider the author more as I read online though in this case I don't think it adds any additional context.

OA also wrote about the way record producers are altering their production process to reflect the ecology of music listening. I found that useful.

Interesting about the stats and the sudden increase in 2012. I have personally been listening to music in public since 2004 and days of iRiver [1] for the reasons the parent post mentions.

[1]: http://www.superfi.co.uk/images/product/large/100001914_1_.j...

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