Like most people my age, I have an aux cord in my car. However, several months ago I implemented a ban of its use except for during the rare occasion when there are no radio stations to be found. The last time the aux cord was resurrected from my glove box was on a cross-country road trip this past summer when we lost signal in the middle of the Rocky Mountains.
Later on during the same trip, while driving through Navajo Nation, where we could drive over 10 miles without a trace of another human, there was one station that graced us with its presence to prevent a reappearance of the aux cord. And let me tell you, it was glorious. All of the songs played consisted entirely of percussion instruments and humans chanting/wailing. None of us understood the words, but everyone knows that music transcends language barriers, so we all went with it and ended up thoroughly enjoying it. It was certainly more memorable than it would have been to listen to Piano Man for the seven hundredth time.
While it is great to occasionally catch a song that you would absolutely never hear otherwise, the aux ban is about more than just being forced to listen to that one country station that services a 20 mile stretch in northern PA every time you drive between school and home. It’s rooted in a larger problem that has been brought on by modern technology. When you are able to instantly listen to a song when you have the urge, it becomes less rewarding to hear it. The reason I first thought to ban the aux cord was because so many of the songs that excited me growing up when they came on the radio no longer had the same effect. In fact, some of them I listened to enough that I no longer even liked them. While there are tons and tons of songs out there, it is still true that there are a finite number of songs any one person will enjoy, and ruining those songs is pretty unfortunate.
The one positive thing I have noticed about these ruined songs is that they still have the same novelty when I hear them on the radio, or after I listen to the entire side of the vinyl album it was released on. In these cases, I was lucky enough to hear it, or “earned” it by listening to the other songs on the album. When you are instantly given what you want, it simply does not provide the same satisfaction. Now, many technological advances have improved the way of life, and as an engineer I even hope to contribute some personally, but at times I wonder whether we would be happier without some technologies-like aux cords.
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