PRESENTATION: THE END OF LISTENING

As evidenced by the myth of the Sirens, Western culture has long perceived noise as a threat to the autonomy and agency of the self. In recent years, noise-cancelling headphones and algorithmic feeds have promised to protect and perfect the self by controlling the sounds and information we take in. Yet hearing only what we want carries its own dangers. In this talk, sound scholar Mack Hagood presents a cultural history of controlled listening and critically examines emerging in-ear technologies that combine artificial intelligence, signal processing, and noise cancellation. These “hearables” promise to give the ear an unprecedented superpower—the end of listening as we know it.