Radiohead Ahead

It has been predicted that some day we will all have tiny cellphones implanted in our brains, allowing us to communicate with anyone anywhere in the world who is similarly wired up. When this day arrives, the person who believes he hears a ringing in his head will no longer be doubted; it’ll just be an incoming call. Perhaps when he is sleeping, a microscopic answering machine in his frontal lobe will kick in.

I am certainly looking forward to these new developments which will elevate multi-tasking from an art to a science. Combined with tiny cameras and video monitors on the inside of the frames of our eyeglasses, our electronic surveillance of the environment around us will be complete. As well, stereophonic music systems the size of a molecule or two, embedded under the ultra-thin membrane of the eardrum, promise to revolutionize the way we manage to distract ourselves, to shut ourselves off from the rest of society and to totally eliminate the human tendency to think. (Actually, a lot of people are already way out in front of modem technology on that score, having dispensed with that function years ago. I meet many of these super advanced people in my travels.)

All of these thoughts have been racing through my as-of-yet-unimplanted brain lately when I see people of all age levels walking in and out of stores, strolling down the streets, jogging and riding their bikes while their noggins are hooked up to various headphone-like listening devices which are pumping their craniums full of tunes. This is, I guess, a natural extension of the car radio which must have seemed absolutely revolutionary when it first arrived on the scene in 1929, especially by people who had lived in a period before radio was even invented. But once electronically produced sound first got carried outside the home and became portable, the genie was out of the bottle. (Also on the drawing board. We will all have our own genie by 2025. I will name mine Harley Dooley.)

And in 2005, with more and more people content to live their entire lives without ever owning an automobile, I guess it would only be natural that sound systems would be made available to those who get around on foot, on bike – some motorcyles already have great radios – and on buses.

Still, the sight of someone preoccupied by whatever is coming out of those two little disks stuck in their ears and virtually oblivious to the world around them takes some getting used to, at least for someone of my generation. It took a long time to get over seeing people pressing metal electronic growths, otherwise known as cellphones, to the sides of their heads while they went about their business. Now there are the walking stereopholks who appear almost offended if you feel the need to disturb them, during their downloaded, upbeated musical reveries.

I’m old enough, alas, to remember family cars that came complete with no radio. On a rainy day every three years or so when no field work on the farm could be done, my parents would drive back to Listowel or up to Seaforth to shop for a new vehicle. It didn’t take them long. As the old car headed out the driveway in the morning, we kids knew that would be the last we’d see of it. That afternoon, Mom and Dad would drive in the lane with a new one. We’d pray there’d be a radio.

Whether there was or wasn’t was of no consequence to our elders. If the deal came with one, we got one; if not, we didn’t and we’d have to wait another three years for another chance in the radio lottery. As the car pulled into the lane, I can remember scanning the fenders for signs of an aerial. Heartache followed the discovery that no aerial could be found. Sadly, in the place on the dash where a radio should have been was only a small plate covering the designated hole.

Today, cars and vans come with not only radios, but high-powered stereos and DVD players with monitors for the kids. They can ride to Florida without ever having to see a mountain, a plain, a stream or the features of an old American town.

I don’t know if it is even possible to get a car without a radio now. But in a world increasingly sound- and light-polluted, it might be the key to the future for people in search of some peace to equip vehicles once again with no audio-visual devices. In my latest new vehicle, I ordered no tapedeck or CD player. I’ve missed neither one. Not even once.

However, I will admit to tooling down the highway with radio songs blaring all around me in volumes much too high for my own good. On days when shutting out the world is the only and best option.

©2005 Jim Hagarty

Author: Jim Hagarty

I am a 72-year-old retired journalist, busy recovering from a lifelong career as an unretired journalist. This year marks a half century of my scratching out little fables about life. My interests include genealogy, humour and music. I live in a little blue shack in Canada and spend most of my time trying to stay out of trouble. I am not that good at it. I also spent years teaching journalism. Poor state of journalism today: My fault. I have a family I don't deserve, a dog that adores me, and two cars the junk yard refuses to accept. My prized possessions include my old guitar and a razor my Dad gave me when I was 14 and which I still use when I bother to shave. Oh, and my great-great-grandfather's blackthorn stick he brought from Ireland in the 1850s. I have only one opinion but it is a good one: People take too many showers.