There is too much noise in my life, and technology is partially to blame.
Let’s start with cell phones. When I enter a theater or a meeting, I try to remember to put it on vibrate, but other times I let it ring. Mine uses a generic tone, and I try to keep the volume at a moderate level. However, as I go about my day, I notice all sorts of loud and sometimes obnoxious tones.
One trend is for people purchasing their choice of music as a ring tone. Hey, I’m all for people expressing their tastes, but do they have to do it in front of me?
I was at a coffee shop the other day serenely contemplating my latte while a fellow patron sat for several seconds listening to what I think was a Taylor Swift song on her cell phone. Unlike Kanye West, I wouldn’t be rude enough to interrupt, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen to her music at that moment. I would have much preferred my fellow coffee drinker have her phone on vibrate or a discrete ring.
Putting up with ringing phones is bad enough, but some smart phones make a noise every time you get an e-mail or a text message. Last week, I reviewed the Motorola Droid. By default, it said “Droid” in a robotic voice every time a message came in. I ended up removing the battery at night so I could sleep, and eventually I figured out how to modify the settings so that it only announces phone calls.
My BlackBerry has an alarm which is a great way to get me out of bed in the morning, but if I fail to turn it off, it rings every morning and it doesn’t stop until I press the “dismiss” key. The BlackBerry’s alarm is loud enough to wake everyone up from the kitchen, where I generally charge my BlackBerry. Even if I choose to sleep in on a particular morning, I’m forced to go downstairs and turned the dang thing off.
We have a Dish Network satellite receiver and personal video recorder in our bedroom, which I mainly use to record and watch “The Daily Show” before I hit the pillow (probably not the best way to relax before bed). Trouble is, the recorder’s hard drive starts to spin for no apparent reason in the middle of the night. Sometimes, it’s loud enough to wake us up and force me to pull the cord from the wall to shut it up.
I’m glad we passed the days when people would walk around with loud boomboxes next to their ears — but now it seems as if everyone has little white earbuds permanently implanted. I have no noise complaints about this — most of the time only they can hear what’s on their iPod — but it bothers me that these folks are isolated from the people around them. When I was in Washington, D.C., last week, I needed directions, but almost everyone nearby had earbuds in and couldn’t hear me. The ones that weren’t listening to music were on the phone.
I may have been walking down a crowded street, but as far as getting anyone’s attention, I could have been in a ghost town.
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