Perhaps 'zombie-like robots' are just kids taking a break

By Miranda Devine
March 27, 2005
The Sun-Herald

Like anything else that becomes hugely popular with school students, the iPod has been banned. Ultimo's International Grammar School last week outlawed the personal digital stereos for fear students were becoming "socially isolated".

Stand by as other schools follow suit.

But you can't stop a cultural phenomenon with rules. iPod people are everywhere, in lifts, on footpaths and buses all over Sydney, the distinctive white cords hanging down from their ears, their quiet eyes focusing on internal rhythms. On school buses more than half the teenagers on board are lost in a world of private tunes, much to the relief of harried drivers. Sometimes iPod people will pull out a white earpiece and share a song with a friend, prompting shudders from onlookers wondering about contagious diseases in earwax.

In the United States, 22 million people own iPods and 4.4 million were sold in Australia last year alone.

But, as always happens with technologically driven social change, fears abound that iPods will lead to antisocial behaviour and destroy traditions and our sense of "community".

The New York Times has complained Manhattan has been invaded by "zombie-like robots . . . the only sign they are not quite human: two white wires that run from their ears into their clothes, just below the neckline, as distinctive as the bolts in the Frankenstein monster's neck".

London's Sunday Times columnist Andrew Sullivan last month lamented the "narrowing" of lives brought by iPods, which he branded an "addictive cult".



All sorts of reasons have sprouted for why iPods are a menace. Death, for one thing. Last September, 16-year-old Christie Arias was hit and killed by a tram in Melbourne while listening to music through headphones, leading police to warn pedestrians about the threat of using headphones that can block out warning sounds such as car horns and tram bells.

In the US, pedestrian deaths are also being blamed on iPod mania. Near Chicago last month student Benjamin Robin was hit by a bus and injured while wearing headphones. Also in Chicago last year, 14-year-old Kelly Nelson was hit by a train and killed while walking along the tracks wearing headphones.

But inattentive people have always been at risk of being run over. And silent electric cars will soon render ears useless as protective devices anyway.

The Australian Defence Department has banned iPods and other portable storage devices, defining them as security threats, around defence areas.

But maybe instead of panicking about the rise of iPods we should consider their benefits. Perhaps they are an antidote to a constantly switched-on world, in which boredom has been banished and private contemplation is a scarce and precious commodity. We are immersed in mindless chatter and empty communication, with mobile phones squawking, text messages pinging, BlackBerry wireless, interactive games, voicemail and countless other gadgets, not to mention face-to-face conversations. Take the average teenage Sydney schoolgirl. If she's not jabbering on the phone or chatting on MSN, she's literally wearing out her thumbs typing text messages on her mobile.

The latest issue of the Medical Journal Of Australia features the first reported case of texting tendonitis. South Australian doctor Robert Menz wrote of the case of a 13-year-old girl who complained this year of a swollen right forearm.

"There was no history of trauma, or recalled change of activity . . . Further inquiry revealed that she had been given a mobile phone in December."

The girl had been sending at least 10 messages a day, of up to 760 characters per message, and using only her right thumb. The strain had resulted in tendonitis.

This frenzy for communicating with each other no matter how trivial the message has to take a toll on your peace of mind.

The more frenetic the city you live in and the more people you come into contact with each day, the more you need your private down time to process your thoughts. iPods let you be a recluse in public.

Life happened, and Abbott responded

It's obvious from the Tony Abbott adoption saga that some people will never give an ideological opponent an even break, no matter how impeccably he conducts himself.

When news first broke last month that Daniel O'Connor, 27, had contacted his birth mother Kathy Donnelly, Abbott's former girlfriend, the Health Minister seemed genuinely happy to have found the son he had wondered about for so many years.

But he was accused of using O'Connor to score points in the abortion debate, even though he deflected all attempts to do so. "I certainly don't think that Daniel ought to become a political football," he said at the time. "If others want to draw lessons for other debates let them do it, but I'm certainly not doing that."

He has been criticised as a hypocrite but he always practised what he preached. His girlfriend became pregnant at 19 and they adopted out the baby in line with his pro-life beliefs. He has never railed against pre-marital sex, so how is he a hypocrite?

Then came last week's bombshell news - O'Connor is not his child but the son of Donnelly's old flatmate, Bill Kensell. The letters pages filled with spiteful missives condemning "Abbott's 'lost child' public relations stunt". Kim Palmer of Narrabeen admitted a "sense of vindication that his highly successful manipulation of an intensely private event into a media frenzy to further promote his own moral beliefs ... has bitten him firmly on his behind."

It's naive to think Abbott could have escaped the media frenzy. He would have become a bizarre Lathamesque recluse whose only option was to retire from politics. Life happened, he responded. And the way he responded tells a lot about his character. When Donnelly told him, after DNA tests, about her fling, he was more gracious than many men. "I can't blame you. I was really busy, I was a bit of a schmuck sometimes," he told her.

Most women watching Donnelly's warm candour on A Current Affair would feel empathy. Abbott had been "the love of my life" and she was sad he was not Daniel's father. "In an oddball sort of way for 27 years we have been a dysfunctional little family ... Tony, I and this child that we didn't have."

It's a story as old as humankind. It's not about feminine deception, as some have said, but about a woman wanting so hard to believe the father of her child is the man she loves, she will block out of her consciousness any evidence to the contrary. In the end, Daniel can take pride in the fact he and everyone involved in his story - from his restrained adoptive parents, his cautious biological father, to the Abbotts and the Donnellys - have weathered the current storm admirably.


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