If 30 mobile phones ring in a carriage, and no one hears them because there are 30 sets of narrowcasting headphones, do they make a noise?

or

Public transport headphone madness
I know what you’re thinking. Yes, people listen to music on public transport. Nothing new there. We’ve landed on the moon. That’s old news. I never gave it much thought either.

Until recently.

In recent times, unencumbered by work worries or indeed worries of any other kind, I have thought in some depth about the question, what is with all these headphone wearing fatherfuckers on public transport? What are the implications, the ramifications, the tribulations?

I suspect that your average Emma has considered the issue, in a flickering subconscious kind of way, and if pressed (on the solar plexus) would advise of certain issues.
What is with people who play their music so loud that you can hear it? Aren’t they hurting their ear drums? That’s so rude.
Mmm, it’s nice not having to feel the impingement of all these other consciousnesses on my consciousness as we sit in this crowded moving box.
My music’s not on but fuck it, I ain’t taking the ear plugs out. People are leaving me a lone.
Bugger, my battery’s dead.

So I gathered some data. 12 bus rides, 10 train rides, several parkpath walks. My results are not statistically significant but for my purposes today that doesn’t bother any one one whit. Here are the figures:
Bus: 39% of all passengers wear headphones
Train: 46% of all passengers wear headphones
Park walkers: 25% of all pederasts, I mean pedestrians, wear headphones.

I have no doubt, these numbers are conservative. I voted for the shooter’s party at the last three local elections. ipOd and mp3 penetration will continue unfettered. Old non-listening folks will die off. The bus drivers will start wearing them. The percentages will climb.

We’re all stars, or perhaps supporting cast, in our own movies. The soundtrack floods our ears while we stroll down the street.

Except when we're victims of the new ipOd-Invade, which can broadcast your music for 30m in all directions, parasitising existing headphones.

People are living very, very different commuter lives these days. No one talks – unless it’s on the phone to someone somewhere else. Do they think? In the way they might think in other situations? (as a card carrying over thinker, with scant little to show for it, I’m loathe to ascribe judgement to this). And I’m afraid that probably not many of them listen either. At least not the way good music deserves to be listened to. This is tv on to keep you company, headphones on to block out the others, your thoughts, your pain. Hey, these are valid purposes.

But like TV, we receive. As others have said, we live in a strange world nowaday. There is so much information, so much broadcast, so much noise with seeming meaning in it – but with very limited opportunities for a meaningful reply. We can but do naught in its face. There is no appropriate response, but to receive. The relationship between information and action has changed, has been disturbed.

Maybe if I thought about it some more I’d figure out what it all means. These public transport headphones. Or I might find out it means nothing. Nothing but fodder for me, silly me.