This morning found us in a cafe, passing the time on a wet and miserable day. Nearby was a middle-aged woman wearing headphones and munching a muffin. I've no idea what she was listening to, could have been a talk on nuclear physics for all I knew, but she reminded me of this comment in a piece about Apple's latest gadgets.
It used to be commonplace to mock wearables; those clunky, uncomfortable things destined for dusty drawers. But this is the direction in which Apple is pushing.
Air Pods have become a phenomenon since they were introduced in 2017 - a step towards the normalisation of "always-in" earbuds. Once features such as auto-translate and sound filtering are added in (not today, but one day in the future), they could become as unmissable as the phone itself.
A Silicon Valley exec once told me that "if you can own the ear you can own the mind". Apple has taken a step towards that objective.
Techie hype perhaps, but there is a degree of ownership in the almost permanent proximity of modern gadgetry.
2 comments:
"if you can own the ear you can own the mind".
That reminded me of Mr. Watkins, who was my house-master back in the late 1960s. Once he had hold of your ear, he could pretty much control any aspect of your being.
Sam - and that reminds me of William Brown. I'm sure I recall a pen and ink picture of William being controlled in this way.
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