The Tyranny of the Soundtrack: When Silence Was a Public Good

Sealing ourselves into bubbles.

There was a time when the world had a natural rhythm of sound and its absence. Silence was the default state, the canvas upon which the meaningful sounds of life were painted. It was the backdrop for the specific, telling noises of a place: the creak of a floorboard, the distant whistle of a train, the wind moving through a field of dry corn.

These were sounds with a source and a story. They communicated information. The silence between them was not empty; it was a space for thought, a shared resource as common and necessary as the air itself.

The first deliberate effort to conquer this natural state was subtle. It was called Muzak. Piped into elevators, department stores, and office buildings in the mid-twentieth century, it was the sound of engineered contentment.

This was a new kind of sound, one designed not to be actively listened to, but to be passively absorbed. Its purpose was to smooth over the rough edges of the day, to fill the awkward silences, and to gently nudge workers and consumers toward a state of placid productivity.

It was the first systematic attempt to treat silence not as a normal condition, but as a problem to be solved with a constant, unobtrusive soundtrack.