@nonoise @noromance
I'm in complete agreement. Attention span is a rare commodity, and in a world where Taylor Swift is considered an artist, there is little new to pay attention to in popular American culture..
Music exposure observation
Hello everyone,
Each month Stereophile seems to have a column that highlights the generational Gap between Boomer/ Gen X audiophiles and Millennial / gen Z listeners, usually emphasizing the ideas of both value/economics and streaming/ on demand services as a way of demarcating why younger generation isn’t as beholden to the Hobby as those of us who have been in it for 20 or more years.
As a proud Gen x-er, I thought about something the other day insofar as what role music plays in a daily life of a typical household. Whereas up to about 20 years ago or so music was a dedicated entertainment investment - that is, one would put on a CD or vinyl, and that would be it. And whether that CD was a complete album or a mixtape of sorts didn’t really matter. More important was the lack of any on demand paradigm: no audio or visual streaming services. In short, music was much more of a dedicated facet of life in most households. Yes, there were cable and DVDs, but the idea of listening to music as more than simply a Whitman’s Chocolate sampler, to use a somewhat weak analogy, wasn’t an option.
Going back even further to my young childhood days of the mid ’70s and ’80s - and for many of you here you’re adult days of the 70s and 80s, music was a viable form of In-House dedication. Putting your record on meant listening to the record in some semblance of continuity, even if background. In short, music was much more of a temporal investment, no matter the quality of the production or the artistry.
And of course, times have changed. And I was thinking about how much my own two children experience music as that similar investment. Yes, I have my dedicated audio room upstairs, and a Sonos set up in the kitchen, as well as the obligatory multi-channel receiver set-up in the family room, but there are so many other things to distract my children from music as a be all end all. Now there does exist streaming video games and streaming video services and On Demand entertainment of all wavelengths, and unless I have them in my car, or I’m playing music in the background as we do something else on a family game night or in the kitchen, it’s simply not the same visceral experience.
I’m not bemoaning this change; everything shifts and if the center does not hold, it simply achieves a new equilibrium somewhere. But it does make me think about this idea of a dedicated focus on something, like, in this case, music, a much more rarified experience. There are simply way too many other stimuli out there more cheaply and efficiently had that take away from the pure audiophile experience. In essence, be growing up experience was in the music is much much different nowadays than it was 20 or 30 or more years ago.
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- 19 posts total
@nonoise @noromance I can agree with you both but I still think finances could be a factor as well. I was getting a first-hand account from my millennial next door neighbor
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@r042wal give that neighbor kid a small AM/FM radio, and see if he'll use it. At age 13 I was mowing lawns for people on weekends and had 2 paper routes. My first was a Radio Shack Patrolman 6 for listening to UHF VHF CB FM AM RADIO. It sat next to my sleeping spot. I listened to it whenever possible to hear anything. Many kids today are handed cell phones and fancy ear buds, and for those who are not fortunate, free air radio is still available. Will they use it - if they don't worry about peer pressures or not meeting the "cool factor". Try it and see.
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The destruction of human concentrated attention is the first goal of control technology... By control technology i means the primitive methods used by corporations to impose with the methods of Bernays ANYTHING they want: breakfeast must be bacon egg taost coffee, to sell pork and smoking makes you healthier, freer, and more happy...Bernays succeeeded... This was prehistory... Now with the technological boom and the destruction of classical education for the masses , which began in the British Empire with the transformation about what is science itself and was completed in America for the masses, the attention span is not only short but shallow... Keeping a deep question in his mind become impossible not only for long but deeply inside us... We live at the surface of phenomena which are only "things".... In the last years any astute observers could see for himself the annihilation of democracy and freedom... But the life span is so short and shallow, there is almost no universal protests... There is Truckers in Canada and some in other countries for sure... Corporations are the enemy of humankind... they need us with a short and shallow attention span and with an education SPECIALIZED as with slaves workers... For example i am astounded by the numbers of people who need new stimulus all over the time in music experience... This indicate the absence of deep links with music.... Because when a work of music struck us we come back to it.... In the reverse some are obsessed by a few set of songs and are closed mind about anytghing out the usual in musical experience... The future is very simple and easy to predict now... Anyone can be a cheap prophet as i am... We must choose between nature and humnan nature , an obsolete set of words by now, and between transhumanism enslavement... The speed at which we lost our humanity is staggering... The good news is spirit will win over matter... To ask the OP about musical exposure, musical experience must be taught and learned...It is the same with acoustic experience... It is not about taste it is about consciousness and self knowledge and history knowledge too ...
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- 19 posts total