“One of the most powerful cosmic events ever witnessed is imaged in exquisite detail by an X-ray observatory in space.” (New Scientist)

Okay, I love my iPod too, but “a new dimension to existence“?? The writer feels connected to all the other earbud-wearers crossing the campus quad; they inhabit a new stratum of society participating in a smug technological superiority and enjoy their music collections in an unprecedented way that represents a major step in human cultural-technological evolution, to listen to this gushing essay. I have the opposite experience when I listen; that I am encased in a shell, oblivious to my social surroundings as well as a salient portion of the ambient environment, and this is not necessarily for the better. Maybe it is because I am not a student confining much of my perambulations to a college campus as the writer does, but I feel more and more that the contexts where I am willing to use it are more and more restricted, as time goes on. And, although it is good at screening out annoying environmental noise, an iPod cannot really be used for background music. I used to take it to the cafe I frequent to sit for a couple of hours with a pot of tea and a book, figuring I would enjoy my own playlist more than the neo-muzak the place plays. But the music from the iPod is so in-my-face that it is not possible to concentrate on a book. So I conclude that my iPod is more for active, deliberate listening, for example while out for a walk with the dog, taking a run or, most frequently these days, to have my entire music collection with me during a long road trip.

And as for adding a new dimension to my existence, probably not unless I add one of these things to my iPod…

I should have realized that my friend Dennis Fox, an incisive thinker who has taught social psychology (a field which, he concludes, “examines fascinating, important subjects in an incredibly silly, mind-numbing way”), would have some illuminating things to say in response to my Stanley Milgram item below. He focuses on Milgram’s more famous ‘obedience experiment’, whose implications he feels have often been misinterpreted:

This has had important implications for Dennis as a social activist, who cites the concept of pluralistic ignorance (“defined at the time as a situation where the majority of people in a community believe or do something that goes against community norms, but because everyone keeps their own behavior a secret, community norms are upheld”) and the implication that a vocal minority proclaiming that the emperor has no clothes can spur the majority to acknowledge their own doubts.

I think Dennis is saying, as he goes on to muse about his own disaffection with his field, that unlike Milgram’s work most social psychological experimentation, while it might demonstrate that things are not as commonsensical as they seem, does so with such trivial findings that it cannot be an important contribution to social change. Moreover, he hints at what is perhaps one of the limitations — that the field’s own professional hierarchy and norms (which replicate those of society at large) may contribute to the maintenance of the status quo, diverting attention from issues that might actually contribute to change.

Dennis’ musings both help me to understand the significance of Milgram’s work from an insider’s prespective and refresh my sense of the importance of the weblogging endeavor at its best in encouraging the subversion of the dominant paradigm (or, as Dennis puts it, undermining pluralistic ignorance). FmH is probably at its most useful when I write about the emperor’s nakedness in nontrivial areas of his anatomy.