The personalization era

I don’t want to spoil the party but haven’t we taken the whole gadget thing a little too far?

It’s easy to jump on the bandwagon. Apple iPod’s have taken the consumer electronics world by storm, making exhaustive CD collections a thing of the past for many. And I have to say, I think those little machines called MP3 players make listening to music fast, easy and enjoyable.

Today we don’t make tape recordings of records or CDs, we download music over the Internet.

But there’s a point at which the gadget revolution begins to wear a little thin.

I notice it when I’m driving along a city street and I come to a crosswalk, only to watch as a pedestrian waltzes across with his earphones plugged into a portable machine. He doesn’t hear me and he doesn’t care: He’s in his own world.

I notice it when I’m hiking and two or three people walk past me, their ears plugged up with listening devices. Sure they can see nature but they can’t hear it as it happens.

Music’s important to me, so I spend a lot of time with it, both playing and listening. When I listen to music, I don’t want to be distracted with other things, so that’s pretty much all I’m doing.

We often listen to music while we’re engaged in other activities. It can be relaxing to have music playing in the background while you read or paint or work on a bike part or that car engine.

Limits are a good thing, too. That limit occurs when your personalized device world conflicts with my eyes, ears and mouth. Do I really have to listen to you detail the fine points of your relationship over your mobile phone with your significant other while I’m perusing books at the local superstore? Those gadgets make it easy for you to do that; they make it hard for me to do my shopping in peace. Let’s call a truce: Cell phones should be turned off in bookstores and libraries, restaurants and movie theaters.

We’re living in the era of personalization. Technology that gave us the personal computer has given us the personal telephone, the personal stereo system, the electronic Rolodex and the personal video game.

It’s great to have the freedom technology affords us. But with freedom, as they say, comes responsibility. Let’s be a little more responsible to each other and remember that we live in a larger community, that we’re all part of an interconnected society.