How headphones set the guy free

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1979 was the year of the individual. Thatcherism began. Deng Xiaoping allowed market forces to enter China through his “special economic zones.” Meanwhile, in Japan, one of the most liberating consumer goods of the last century went on sale. It allowed people to control their listening environment, and to that extent their state of mind, at all times. Even the trade name (too generic to be viable now) suggested a new type of human being. Neolithic man. Renaissance man. Walkman.

Portable Private Sound: I want to salute the spread of this invention from luxury to commonplace. But what strikes me the most is how far it is still from being universal. On the street and in the subway, in airport waiting rooms and in bank queues, most people, even if they are unaccompanied, have their ears uncovered. No AirPods grace them. (Not even the cheap Philips TAT2206 which I prefer.)

If you are among the rejections, allow me a question. How can you stand it? Dead air, I mean. The absence of stimulation. Or, even worse, the presence of an inappropriate type of stimulation. You’re at the mercy of other people’s overheard chatter (“She, like, doesn’t have a growth mindset”) and the random honking of life. I like urban ambient noise. I think cities without cars will feel drab and lifeless. But the point is to tune in and out of melee at will. Exposure without mediation is something that technology has saved us these 44 years.

We still don’t know why, in the 1980s, cities began to reverse their mid-20th century depopulation. Tougher policing is cited. So is the shift in work from factories (which need space) to services (which don’t). So is the cultural stigma attached to suburbia. To this mix, I would add the rise of mobile audio. For the first time, urbanites could live in a sensory bubble. They could take advantage of their difficult environment. The streets became what Dr. Michael Bull, a theorist on the subject, calls “privatized pleasure palaces.”

The lesson is that it is technology, not politics, that decides the texture of life.

As urban reform, I would put the Walkman and its heirs above any transportation bill or crime bill in my lifetime. Elizabeth Line is as good as all the first anniversary reviews suggest. Drilling a new underground shaft in London, the most tunneled city, is a technical feat, like putting a new vein in a wrist. The soothing off-white color of the seasons has something of Kubrick about it.

In the end, however, the improvement in urban life will be less than that achieved with the iPod. An invention speeds up (some) travel. the other – the flâneurfriend of — made them all so likable you’d rather slack off.

The lesson is that technology, not politics, decides the texture of life. I keep reading that I am living the end of neoliberalism. However, when was the individual freer: a generation ago or now? The tax burden was lower then. Trade between Britain and the Continent was easier. The United States and China had not quarreled. But his mobile audio device was a Discman, both too clunky and too fragile to use with confidence. So, on a walk, you engaged with the city on its terms, not yours. No more. Multiply that across other atomizing creations (Uber, Airbnb) and the idea of ​​a new collectivist era makes more sense on paper than on the street.

Having been properly educated, I don’t wear headphones when in front of cashiers or other human beings. Being middle-aged, I’ve ditched the big over-ear Sennheisers (it looked like I was calling in airstrikes from a drone) for discreet pods. Other than that, there are no restrictions. I have them seconds before and seconds after a social date. I feel as restless as a smoker quitting when I leave the flat without them.

Psychobabblers will diagnose this as “avoidant” behavior, a ruse to avoid being alone with one’s thoughts. I doubt it. My work requires hours and hours of silence. I have created a domestic atmosphere of almost monastic tranquility. Disappearing into the self is precisely the point. Akio Morita, the great president of Sony, was sensitive to fears that the Walkman allowed for unbridled individualism. Thank God they came true.

janan.ganesh@ft.com