Are portable cd players or the new iPods a way of regaining your personal space and a tool whereby users manage space, time and the boundaries around the self? This prof thinks so.

I've always thought portable music devices tremendously anti-social, a method to prevent the user from speaking, listening, or interacting with anyone no matter the environment, and escaping into an individualistic, immature fantasy land. I have students who, immediately after class is finished, pack up their books, rig up their walkman, and stroll out of class to the audible tinny blast of very bad music. No talk with their fellow students, rather an escape back into their own little musicial nirvana, reminiscent of moody teenagers who'd rather brood in their room than speak with friends and family.

But what you listen to and when has a more subversive edge as well. It can undermine some of the messages aimed at you. Shopping for food while listening to a Bach violin concerto completely remakes the experience. It turns you from a grazing animal into something finer. In the same way listening to David Bowie's The Laughing Gnome would radically alter a dressing down from a policeman.

And reading a book, having a civil conversation, and conducting yourself with a degree of good manners would also be shocking as well as transformative. Turn off da noise, say please and thank you, and read a damn book. We all have to live in the world with you.

If I saw a patron at the grocery store, wired to his walkman and listening to Bach, I'd faint.