The Weaponization of Sound

It's everywhere now: at the airport, restaurants, supermarkets, gas stations. Ambient noise masquerading as music. It's unavoidable, compulsory: you must listen, you must be happy, you must not think, you must buy. Resistance is futile.

But Pipedown, an obscure yet feisty British newsletter, does resist this sound invasion. Recently, my friend and colleague Karen Croft wrote this article for Pipedown about how the tech invaders in San Francisco have escalated the noise level in the city. It's true: We need to hear ourselves think. We need to actually talk and exchange ideas. We need to be human again.

The View From San Francisco

By Karen Croft

IN 1968 Philip K. Dick

published the novel Do

Androids Dream of Electric

Sheep? that inspired the 1982

film Blade Runner. The book’s hero,

Rick Deckard, is a bounty hunter

stalking androids in a dystopian

San Francisco. His job is almost

impossible because androids look

like humans but are robots, unable

to feel human emotions.

The San Francisco of 2023 is now

Dick’s vision realized. The city

centre is filled with boarded-up

shops, empty luxury stores, vandals

and the homeless. The modern

androids are the tech workers who

have come from elsewhere and know

little about the city’s history. They

walk the streets staring at their

mobiles, earphones in place, unable

to hear or see what goes on around

them, not seeming to care. The tech

companies they work for have been

given the keys to the city, driving the

natives out. The true humans who

remain are outnumbered and have

the challenge, like our hero Rick, of

trying to figure out whether they are

speaking to another human or not.

They also have to live in a world

filled with unsettling sounds at all

times, even when they are sleeping

– some people sleep with their

randomly beeping mobiles on. All

of this is because one of the key

attributes of androids is that they

cannot tolerate quiet. They have to

be connected to a source of sound

the way humans need air. If they

aren’t distracted by piped music or a

podcast, they might have to look

at—and possibly talk to—humans,

and their inadequacies might

be discovered.

Business people,

knowing or sensing this need for

constant distraction, provide loud

distracting noises to attract their

android customers. One enlightened San Francisco

restaurant owner told me he feels he

has to play loud music in the bar of his

otherwise music-free oasis because

“The young people want to come to

drink, look at their phones and avoid

talking to each other, but they want

to feel like they’ve had a good time,

so I have to play music for them.”

There is also a myth, seemingly

accepted by the owners of most

stores and restaurants, that piped

music makes people spend more

money. What seems more likely is

what an enlightened manager of

a lovely, quiet hotel in Deauville,

France believes: “ Music makes

people aggressive.”

Go into any

restaurant in San Francisco and you

will likely find harsh, loud music-like sounds that make guests speak louder to be heard over the noise,

so escalating the din, making it

harder to hear your dining partner—

or yourself—think. It will leave

you perhaps feeling you’ve been

to a party but it will also leave

you feeling nervous and you might

have a headache not totally due to

alcohol.

No wonder the word noise

comes from the Greek word for

nausea.

Florence Nightingale

recognized noise pollution as a

health hazard in 1859 when she

wrote, “Unnecessary noise is the

most cruel abuse of

care which can be inflicted

on either the sick or the well.”

A study in 2017 on human health

and noise showed that noise

pollution is under-reported but can

cause not only hearing loss but

negative social behaviour, problems

with concentration, irritation and

stress reaction as well as sleep

and cardiovascular disturbances.

It was also found to accelerate

the development of latent mental

illnesses. No one seems to be

listening to this evidence—perhaps

because the music is too loud.

One bit of positive news suggests

that litigation may be part of the

solution. A couple in Italy sued their

city Brescia over the noise from

loud, drunk bar patrons that stopped

them sleeping night after night. They

won, the judge deciding that the

noise was “harmful to the couple’s

health” and infringed their right to

peace and quiet. Let’s hope that the

concept of a “right” to peace and

quiet is normalized.

If restaurateurs can’t stand quiet,

perhaps they can pipe Bach instead?

I suggested just that to the manager

of a high-end restaurant in San

Francisco. I’d been dining there

for years, and every time a jarring

tape of inexplicable music would

play on a loop. The mix of pseudo

rock-jazz and shrill, intermittent

bursts of off-key vocals would make

me and my friends jump. And it didn’t fit

the restaurant’s otherwise elegant

ambiance. I mentioned this to

several waiters and each time I did

they nodded, looked around to make

sure their boss wasn’t looking, and

said. “I agree. It’s awful. We have

to listen to it all day!” They told me

that the manager liked the music

and wouldn’t change it, even when

they warned him that guests didn’t

like it. I went to the restaurant

recently and the same old tape was

on. The manager happened to be on

the floor that day so I asked again if

things could be changed or turned

off. He said sorry, the CEO made the

decisions. After he left the room,

two of the staff came up and said

“We are so glad you did that. The

music is so distracting!” (Indeed, our

waitress had forgotten to put in our

order!)

Music distracted me recently when

I went to the supermarket, where

the piped-in noise sounded like a

computer-generated Mariachi band

with a strangled duck as its lead

singer. The piercing sounds made me

so nervous and anxious that I forgot

to buy several items on my list.

I drove across the street to my favorite

service station to fill up. Even when

I’m shopping across town I make the

trip there because the owner pipes

in classical music at the pumps.

Today it was Bach. I asked the young

man at the desk if people liked the

classical music. “Yes, most people

do like it,” he said, “They say it

makes them feel calm.”

When I emailed Dave, the owner of the

gas station, to thank him for playing classical

music, and to find out why he made the choice

to do so, he replied, “I am pleased you enjoy our

music…This neighborhood is very special and I

wanted to thank my customers, especially those

who wish a few minutes of calm."

Bless you, Dave.

Rutger Hauer plays a scary android in Blade Runner.