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IPod Zombies Take Manhattan!


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The World at Ear's Length

February 15, 2004

By WARREN ST. JOHN

Idea for a sci-fi horror flick: New York is invaded by

zombielike robots. They ghost along the sidewalks,

oblivious of pedestrians, and have frequent near misses

with taxis and cyclists, causing chaos. They carry a secret

weapon - no bigger than a deck of cards - that can render

humans invisible. The only sign they are not quite human

themselves: two white wires that run from their ears into

their clothes, just below the neckline, as distinctive as

the bolts in the Frankenstein monster's neck.

No need to make the movie, of course. They're already here:

the iPod people. Apple sold around 750,000 iPods during the

holiday season, up from 250,000 in the same period in 2002,

and a disproportionate number were bought by New Yorkers,

said Vipul Patel, an analyst at Jupiter Research, a

technology research firm. Having had time to figure out how

to use the gadgets and their new imitators, and to load

them up with a gazillion tunes, the wave of new iPod owners

are strutting around Manhattan in a seemingly endless

parade of one-person dance parties.

Much has been made of the reasons for the device's

popularity - you can D.J. the soundtrack to your life, for

example, or iPods hold a record store's worth of music. But

not a few New Yorkers also notice that, corked off from

reality by their ear buds, iPod users are gumming up the

works of the city. They stand in line at Starbucks and at

banks, unaware that the person at the counter is yelling

"Next!" No matter how loudly you shuffle your feet on the

sidewalk behind them - making the scrunchy sole-on-cement

sound that New Yorkers instinctively understand as "Move!"

- they won't step aside. And as the less fortunate among us

know, forget asking these people if they can spare some

change. They can't hear you!

"They're in a daze," said Rosie Garcia, the manager of the

Hot & Crusty bakery in Grand Central Terminal, who said she

deals with customers in earphones "all the time."

"It's: `Can I help you? Can I help you? Can I help you!' "

she said. "You have to wave at them to get their

attention."

Since the Walkman arrived in the United States in 1980, New

Yorkers have been using gadgets to tune each other out, and

cellphones have certainly done their share to complicate

social relations. But the rise in sales of iPods and other

portable digital players like the Rio Cali amounts to a

significant escalation in New Yorkers' continuing campaign

to ignore, snub and look through one another.

The immense storage capacity of iPod and its imitators

offers at least the opportunity for total, uninterrupted

isolation from one's surroundings for long - extremely long

- periods of time. It is now possible to commute, to

stroll, to shop, even to go to a Knicks game, without

having to listen to another human being, or even the same

song. There is no rewinding or CD-changing to permit the

outside world to leak inside the cocoon. With a jukebox in

your pocket, a suitable tune is always at the ready, no

matter your mood. And if you have little white ear buds

rammed in your ears, there is always an excuse not to

acknowledge fellow humans. "I'm busy right now," iPod users

seem to say. "I'll get back to you in 10,000 songs."

"It's `I'm listening to my music - don't bother me,' " said

Douglas Ladendorf, 40, a Webmaster who got his iPod in

December and uses it to listen to Sting and Seal on his

daily commute in Manhattan. "Someone stops you, and they

ask for money or any number of guilt-trip-type things -

everyone is trying to avoid those situations. Having an

iPod makes people pass over you. It's too much effort to

get your attention."

Michael Gitlitz, an iPod-wearing art dealer walking down

Fifth Avenue on Wednesday, put it another way: "It's the

next best thing to being transported from place to place in

a pneumatic tube."

Much of America - the part that lives behind the wheel of a

car and views life through the glare of the windshield -

has long since adapted to life in a bubble. But city

dwellers are supposed to be different; their constant

interaction with other human beings, urbanites like to

think, makes them more socially advanced creatures than the

detached inhabitants of car culture. But could the iPod and

similar high-capacity players be turning the vibrant

sidewalks of New York into the pedestrian equivalent of the

soulless freeway?

Yes, it could, says Michael Bull, a lecturer in media and

culture at the University of Sussex in England and the

world's leading - perhaps only - expert on the social

impact of personal stereo devices. Mr. Bull has studied

both the Walkman and the iPod, and says the iPod is

changing urban life.

"The potential for continual play means you never have to

tune in to the environment you're in," he said. "You're

perpetually tuned out."

Mr. Bull said that wearing an iPod all the time amounts to

"blanking out" other people.

"We have certain rules of civility and recognition - to

recognize their use of space," he said. "In some ways the

use of these devices denies that prerogative. If you're in

an environment where many people are blanking you out, that

makes the environment more inhospitable."

Asking actual iPod users about this subject is no easy

matter, since it means invading the cocoon they have spent

$300 or more to construct. To get their attention on

Wednesday at rush hour in Midtown, I made a sign saying,

"I'm an NY Times reporter - CAN I INTERVIEW YOU ABOUT YOUR

iPOD?" which I held in front of anyone wearing those

telltale white wires to see if I could make mental radio

contact.

Peterpaul Scott, 33, was walking home from work at Tommy

Hilfiger when he saw the sign and removed an ear bud,

acknowledging for a moment that I existed.

Mr. Scott said he has 1,400 songs on his iPod - hip-hop,

house classic, soul, rock 'n' roll - and he said he listens

to it three to four hours a day.

"I like that it drowns out New York," he said. "The only

time I feel weird is on an elevator. When you get on an

elevator, you've got to tune back into the world."

The only strangers with whom Mr. Scott actively engages

while he is in his special place are other iPod users, he

said.

"It's a society within itself," he said. "You've got your

biker community, your hip-hop community. And now you've got

your iPod community. It's all about those wires."

Griffin Creech, a 27-year-old actor, stopped for the sign

and removed his earphones. He has a thousand songs on his

iPod, which he got in November, and said listening to the

device in Manhattan makes him feel as though he is in his

own music video. He dismissed Mr. Bull's concern over the

iPod's social impact as "something some professor would

say."

"It's hard to ignore New York City," he said, before

replacing his earphones and going back under.

The fear that personal stereos could lead to antisocial

behavior is an old one. The late Akio Morita, a founder of

Sony and the company's chief executive at the Walkman's

introduction, was said to have been so afraid of the

device's capacity for creating solipsistic drones that he

insisted early on that the Walkman have two headphone jacks

and a microphone so listeners could communicate with each

other. There is little evidence that the Walkman wrecked

modern society, so some technologists say there is little

reason to fear the iPod.

"I don't see it as a private cocoon," said Mark Poster, a

professor of film and media studies at the University of

California, Irvine, who has studied the social impact of

cellphones. "I see it as connecting with a musician and

therefore making a connection that's not related to

physical space. We need to understand it, instead of

saying, `It's not how we used to be, so it's bad.' "

The people at Apple, which makes the iPod, concede that a

few antisocial types might use the iPod to turn off the

world, but call such people a small minority. The notion

that the hot-selling contraptions could lead to social ills

almost seemed to hurt one company executive's feelings.

"It's a little wacky to look at it that way, when the iPod

has brought so much happiness into people's lives," said

the executive, Greg Joswiak, the vice president for

hardware product marketing.

Of course someone trying desperately to get the attention

of a zoned-out digital-player user - someone being blanked

out - might see it differently. Ms. Garcia, the Hot &

Crusty manager, said that when a long line of customers are

frozen in place by someone lost in his own mental music

video, it can be highly irritating. But she expressed a

measure of awe at the immersive powers of those white

wires.

"These people are very distracted by whatever it is they

listen to," she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/fashion/...7c21871fe3f0a25

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