Imposing on Hearing

Published on August 31, 2024 (↻ September 18, 2024), filed under Everything Else (RSS feed for all categories).

Here’s something I find intriguing:

Of all our senses, it seems pretty easy to control what we see, smell, touch, or taste—but not what we hear. ^*

You can close your eyes or look away, you can wait out or—neither far nor for long—move away from a source of smell, you can stop touching or being touched, and you can swallow or spit out what you don’t enjoy tasting.

That doesn’t always work, but usually.

For hearing, it seems to be different.

Sure, there are examples of what you can control—turn off the music or the TV, close the door, ask people you’re close with to be quieter. But from there, controlling what you hear may only work if you move away from the source, something that can be hard or impossible.

For the way sound and hearing work, our sense of hearing may make us most vulnerable to being imposed on.

The key is that sound does impose because it’s so easily inescapable—we cannot just hear the other way or (like that! 🫰) change our location and move our environment.

People who emit sound and who aren’t aware of this, tend to unintentionally impose on others.

People who emit sound and who are aware of this, intentionally impose on, push their will on, and even violate others.

I believe that for this special situation, for these characteristics of sound and its effects on us, we need to manage sound, and do much more to do so effectively and empathically.

This doesn’t mean that we need a quiet world.

It does mean to start where we should always start, that whenever someone is being or is feeling imposed on—harassed—, we take that seriously and mitigate the harm. ^† This includes to speak up—which, from my experience, few people do—and encourage more speaking up when others impose.

It means to avoid, at least limit, unnecessary sound, and unnecessarily loud sound. This includes stopping the production and use of unnecessarily loud vehicles (think terrorist motorcycles) and devices, as well as moving events to venues where they cannot and don’t disturb who doesn’t want to be disturbed (being disturbed which should be opt-in, not opt-out).

It means to be smarter and more innovative when it comes to noise insulation and protection. This includes much stricter building codes (hat tip Jim Prior, in The Noise Free Home) and researching effective tech that can shield from sound (even though that’s a challenge).

Still, I can write as smart as I want here, and there’s always more. But the point is, hearing is fascinating, it’s a sense that we cannot defend well (and that some people do violate), and, accordingly, one worth protecting. Good if and where we already do—bad if and where we don’t. I think we generally need to do more.

(If you do enjoy emitting sounds, be courteous and make sure not to impose. And if you are being imposed on, or witness others being imposed on, take action, like asking to dial it down or to stop, and asking others to take action, too.)

^* Before we begin, this is all simplified. Some people do have no or no great sense of hearing. Others have others senses so developed, they’re more sensitive about these. Mileage varies.

^† We do that in the interlinked understanding that if we make someone better off, we’re all better off; and that if someone else isn’t well off, we together cannot be well off, either.

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a frontend engineering leader and tech author/publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead for companies like Google and as an engineering manager for companies like Miro, I’m somewhat close to W3C and WHATWG, and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development (and engineering management), but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences.

If you’d like to do me a favor, interpret charitably (I speak three languages, and they do collide), yet be critical and give feedback, so that I can make improvements. Thank you!