Public Radio

I listened to National Public Radio this morning. This was not some new initiative. It was a return to old habits. Hearing the commentators talking, the theme music in the background, and the static on my old clock radio all seemed so 1990s to me.

Somewhere along the line, I had been seduced into an online simulation of life, whether through the dry newsreader on my tablet or blurbs that pop up from this or that app.

I’d listened to public radio since I was a kid in New York. My friend’s parents listened to classical music on one of the public stations, and I thought that when I grow up, I’d like to sit around in the evening and listen to Bach and Vivaldi too. I was at that age when influences from outside your home begin to influenece you. and we all know that there are worse things than classical music that you can pick up.

It wasn’t until after I ceased working as an anthropologist that public radio in the morning got displaced from the morning routine. I was working afternoons and evenings, so I listened during the commute. But the insidious creep of email and the Web into life began to displace the sound of lucid reportage and musical interludes. As I prepared myself for work at a UPS package hub, MP4 players, iTunes, and other things took precedence on the commute. I had to work hard and be conscientious at listening.

Then, this morning, the old clock radio kicked on. My wife had set her wake-up time for AM rather than PM. No one turned the radio off when I woke her last night for her night shift, so I woke this morning to WBUR informing me of fires, alarms, human interest, and musical interludes. Rather than stumbling downstairs for coffee, turning on the computer, and finally reading the news, I heard it.

It taught me how much my online life influences my daily routine. There was a text message from a vendor asking for a favorable review on some rating app and an entire queue of work and personal emails. Then there were the online newspapers. If I wanted visuals with audio, I could go to several sites, but all of them are online.

The interesting about the radio was that it was not self-filtered. I wasn’t making decisions about what I’d click on next. A programmer for the show did that. As a result I listened to news segments I probably would not have selected on my own to listen to.

That last item gave me pause—more than a small amount of prejudice had crept into my selections. I read what caught my attention and was of interest to me. There were some very personal filters in place. I did not necessarily have my knowledge expanded in areas I was ignorant of, and I had voids in areas I should have known about but I didn’t investigate.

One of the big advantages of being online is the ability to curate our interests. However, that ability to self-curate is also a significant deficiency in our online existence. We may not investigate things outside our immediate interests.

In effect, the blinders we wear are ones we shape for ourselves.