Airpods and the Bicameral Mind

When the Airpods first came out, I was fascinated by their idiosyncratic design. After buying a pair and trying them on, they blew my mind with this weird feeling that I get when I listen to audiobooks or podcasts — it felt like the podcast host or the audiobook’s reader is inside my head, speaking directly to me.

Of course headphones and earphones have been around for decades before the Airpod and they created an immersive listening experience. The presence of electric chords or the weight of the headphones, however, reminded me that I’m still listening to an output from an external media source.

Airpods changed that. They’re light as a feather, sometimes I forget the fact that I wore them. Especially after waking up, when my mind still wanders back to the sliver of dream that I didn’t completely wake up from, the moment I put on the Airpods and start listening to podcasts and sleepwalk around the living room and the kitchen, I felt like the person was directly speaking to me from inside my head. I’ve gotta say the advancement of recording technology (eg. Directional microphone, 3Dio that quite a few ASMR people use) contributed to creating this weird but fascinating feeling of “voice in my head”.

The same year when the first generation Airpods were released (2016) but just a few weeks before the Airpods release, HBO TV Show Westworld aired its final episode of the season 1. The title of the episode was The Bicameral Mind. Intrigued by this esoteric title, I looked it up and learned that this term refers to a hypothesis in psychology — that in ancient times before the human being came to have consciousness, they had two “chambers” inside their mind: the one that speaks to the other one that listens. The speaking part is directly connected to God and that’s why in ancient people’s writings they said they heard God speaking to them, the hypothesis explains.

A voice in our heads. Speaking directly to us. Telling us what’s good and what’s bad, what we should do. Sounds just like me wearing Airpods doing a Headspace meditation session.

With this high-fidelity channel established between the media source and our minds, those who own the media source (podcasters, meditation apps, advertisers, ASMR hosts and a lot more) now have direct access to our mind and influence our thoughts and behavior. Feels like modern-day brainwashing.

If we became very much susceptible to brain-washing due to the immersive recording technology and devices like Airpods, would there be a way for us to take advantage of all these for our own good?

What if I listen to self-affirming messages recorded by either myself or a professional voice actor with my Airpods and do a meditation session every morning? Would this overpower and eventually reprogram the voice of the inner critic that judges, blames and opposes me all the time? I want to try this out and report back later.