Seen on the Tube...

It's interesting to study people's habits as they sit (or stand) on the Tube, enduring that daily ritual of subterranian transportation. On the average commute to work, you've got roughly 4 groups.

1 - The gossipers - those reading the free tabloid-esque newspapers that litter the trains. These people will be getting updates on which pop stars were at which club last night as well as fashion advice and absolutist news stories devoid of any contrasting point of view.

2 - The listeners - people listening to mp3 players. Seems to be roughly 70% iPod users judging from the white earbuds.

3 - The readers. We'll get back to this group.

4 - The sleepers. These people nod off while on the tube, and it's beyond me how they know when their stop is. Perhaps they have fine-tuned their circadian rhythms to correspond with the right stop.

Oh yeah, and there are actually a few people who just stand there looking menacing.

Anyway, I've been struck recently by the books of choice of group 3, the readers. Given the short time periods involved with the average tube ride and relatively chaotic atmosphere, you would expect to see lots of Da Vinci Codes or the latest John Grisham novel, right? Well, not so fast. In the past week alone, I've seen the following books in the hands of tube-riders: Imagined Communities (a book outlining views of the social construction of communities and their relation to political entities), A Brief History of Time (Stephen Hawking's book about cosmology), The Humboldt Current (an explanation of how 19th century exploration relates to the American environmental movement), and Hamlet (I hope I don't need to explain that one).

Sure, there are plenty of shallow bestsellers and romance novels, but I was surprised by the level of reading going on. It was reassuring and inspiring to see members of the general public interested about such substantial issues and actively learning. Not that central London is an accurate representation for the rest of the country or the world, but I think in many cases, the level of discourse in the media and pop culture is determined by the lowest common denominator. This underestimates the sophistication and interest level of many people and fails to inspire us to improve ourselves. Many of the most interesting thing going on at the forefront of science, for example, cannot be sufficiently dumbed-down to suit standard media outlets, so people aren't interested in learning more and rely on stereotypes and TV shows for their science knowledge. We've got to give the "general public" more credit than that.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I'm a listener.