Listening to construction workers drill, jackhammer, saw and tear the concrete in the parking lot 2 floors below me has got me thinking about noise in general. I like the crisp industrial sounds as much as the next person, but I do notice one or two people complain about headaches, or a general ability to use it as an excuse why they can't get their work done. Now me, I'm a hard worker and will gladly slave over a hot computer to get the job done come hell or high water, but sometimes I can relate to that feeling of malaise that there is something interfering in my brain.
Its easy to demonize our hard working safety toe booted friends downstairs for our unproductivity, but lets seriously stop a minute to consider some things that don't immediately occur to us, because we don't "hear" them in the traditional sense:
- Radio waves from radio towers
- Cell phones (probably classified as radio waves)
- Vibrations from computers, monitors, TVs, etc. (you usually don't notice this noise until you shut the computer down)
- Vibrations from lights
- electrical energy from other humans
It also sounds crazy that other people could cause interference in your brain or disrupt your cells in some other way, but lets face it, our neurons are powered by an electrical force, even if it is very small. Again though, it doesnt' seem like something that would really be worth researching since it would cause mass hystaria and take away from important things like bird flu and AIDS. I would love to see a study where they checked identical twins and one had an abundance of human contact and maybe the other one grew in the woods raised by pigs or maybe his lonely uncle shared a shack with him in The Pas. But with all the confounding variables it just seems like a lot of work and possibly no chance of figuring out what effect there is if any. I should probably just start the Church of White Noise and give sermons on the evil dark noises. Yeah thats definitely what I should do.
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