‘Huh?’

Let me tell you why I most probably won’t be buying an iPod, or any other mp3 player, even though I think they’re stylish, contain amazing technology , and love them.
At a crowded table in a crowded restaurant recently I watched a man who was ignoring everyone else at his table, his head full of the personal demons pumping from his portable mp3 player. His ears were plugged, his eyes were glazed, and he might as well have not been there. When later he got up to leave the restaurant, he hardly noticed the people he brusquely barged and elbowed his way past.
About a week after that, I was in the same restaurant when another man was on a date with his girlfriend. The whole time he was there he was wired. Every time she tried to speak to him he said, ‘Huh?’ or ‘What?’ Not once in 45 minutes did he remove his headphones. All the time she was eating, he was jerking and shaking to the sounds in his ears.
I’m obviously getting old, because I can still remember a time when people used to talk to each other. Wasn’t there a time when couples went out to a restaurant to do more than just eat? Wasn’t there a time when a man would gaze dreamily into his girlfriend’s eyes and focus to hear the soft, gentle purr of her voice?
I used to think television was social enemy number one—and then the cell phone came along. For a while, friends would get together, gather around a table… and spend all their time looking at their cellphones. But now even the phones have been muscled aside. You no longer look cool with only a pretty honey hanging on each arm—your ears must now be sprouting earphones or at the very least bulging with Bluetooth receivers.
Welcome to Swazi GadgetLand. You have nothing to lose except your friends and your hearing.
‘Huh? What’s that about hearing? Speak up…’ For some reason I remember a story about two old men who met each other whilst shopping in town. ‘Hey,’ one said, ‘Long time. How are you doing?’
‘Oh, I’m so excited,’ said the other, ‘I’ve just bought a new hearing aid. I had to order it and it was so expensive, but it’s transformed my life.’
‘That’s good,’ said the first. ‘What kind is it?’
‘Oh,’ said the other, looking at his watch, ‘I think it’s about four o’ clock.’
Because the technology these days is so powerful, people are plugging into their personal players for long stretches at a time and regularly cranking up the volume to drown out background sounds and ‘distractions’. In doing so, they are damaging their ears.
Current advice is that users should not listen to their iPods or players for more than twenty minutes without taking a break, and certainly should not listen with the volume above 50%, except perhaps for extremely short bursts. All the evidence available, though, is that no-one is heeding this advice. (No-one is heeding advice about the volume of sound in nightclubs either. Audiologists say we should all wear ear plugs if we go clubbing, because of the volume of music played by DJs, but I have never met a clubber wearing ear plugs.)
The risks are real. Hand-held video players and games consoles and all kinds of new funky things are on the way, but GadgetLand has the potential to lead us into a lonely, silent, world, where every conversation begins and ends with ‘Huh?’ Do we really want this kind of a future? I don’t; so I won’t be buying that iPod after all.

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