Private and public

So I was reading today about the multi media center which is, apparently, now a child's bedroom. I would link the article but you have to register for it; it was in the New York Times. It took a sort of predictable slant, really; What Are Kids Coming To These Days or, I guess more accurately, What The Hell Are Parents Up To These Days. Their poitn was that some terrifyingly high number of children have TV/DVD/MP3/steros/computers/cell phones and other media objects in their bedrooms. As usual, in their numbers they didn't really distinguish between 6 year olds with a DVD/TV/MP3/laptop/what have you and 17 year olds with the same.

Seesm to me there might be a difference. In terms of what the hell their parents are thinking, anyway.

However, it seems to me that people's relationship with media, generally, changes. I have not decided whether I think this has more to do with age or with the generation of which the person is a part or maybe both.

Here is what I mean: When I was young, music was considered to be a vital part of private time by my peers. Indeed, it was as important as breathing. It was a link amoung us. As when a Catholic attends a Mass, the ritual is supposed to link us all, all Catholics all over the world, in the echoes of its measured rhythms, so was the music supposed to connect us (and also separate us from our impossible parents who never understood anything anyway). At least that was the general idea.

So everybody had a stereo set in their room. Everybody. Even if it was just a boom box. Heck, even when we had turntables, we had those little dinky turntables with the tinny speakers in our bedrooms. Well, I didn't. But that little girl who lived up on Abingdon Drive did, and played her Donny Osmond records on them, too.

My parents, I think, thought music was a public experience. In any event, their stereos were in the living room/dining room.

I guess for the kids now, music really is a private experience, because everybody has an MP3 in their pocket, do they not? (Somebody page Mary J for her insights on this).

Television on the other hand was considered by all and sundry to be a family event as I recall. At least, what I remember about television is watching Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom and Jacques Cousteau and Sunday Disney with the family and Speed Racer, George of the Jungle, Super Chicken, and Dudley DooRight on Saturday mornings with the sibs.

Now I think TV is much more a private kind of thing. Everybody seems to have "my" show.

Telephone. Well, heck, there was a public to private revolution. Party lines to cell phones in three generations. When I was young it was a very hip (or very privileged) child who got a phone in their room. Now I think regular middle class kids have phones in their pockets. Though may I point out, cell phones are really very easily monitored, and therefore may be more public than people like to think about.

Home video was certainly, for folks my age, a public event; in fact it often turned out to be date night back when you would go rent a video player along with your videos. Waaay Back When, I mean, like a couple ten years ago. Now it's how we watch television, isn't it? And the movie theaters (igloo shaped or not) are suffering.

Computers however were then entirely private and really pretty boring. I understand they now are much more public, that is, people are more likely to have them in their living rooms. And when we have guests over, maybe half the time some number of people wind up sitting in front of the comuter looking at something -- sometimes it is pictures someone brought along on a CD, sometimes it's even somebody's web site. I wonder when the first time will be that my mother calls up this blog at someone else's house to show off pictures of her grandchildren.

I think it is possible that by the time the kids are old enough for me to have to think about this much in practical terms, the technology will have reframed the question. Maybe we will have one big intranet in the house and just have docking stations in the rooms which wil cover all the media, visual and auditory. Maybe even telephones, too.