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.
"if you can own the ear you can own the mind".
ReplyDeleteThat 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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