Tom Says the Sony Walkman Began the Curse Against Radios and Shared Experience

 

 

 

Commenting on the death of the Sony Walkman, Tom WC writes:

This is the device that started the death of decent radios with speakers. Followed by the CD walkman and the Ipod it led the revolution in "personal" music and the demise of music and radio as a shared experience.

Comments

[Ed S.]

I agree in some part. But the Walkman was a reaction against the noise pollution and audio assaults from the Boombox, remember? So the boombox shares some of the blame.
Also, by the end of the 70's there was no other way to enjoy your music on the run, in private. It was the right product, at the right time.

[Ken K.]

(the demise of music and radio as a shared experience.)

However it's interesting that the first couple of generations of Walkmen had two headphone jacks, the idea being that people would listen together. The feature was dropped when feedback told Sony that nobody was using this feature.

[KE7CYT]

This brings me to my mp3/podcast experience. My wife and I - in our early 50's - share listening to mp3 and podcasts by plugging the mp3 player into the best amplified speaker on the planet. What's that you say? It's the Panasonic RF-888 - just plug into the Mic Port with a Stereo/Mono adapter. All the volume and clarity you could ever want in a portable package!

[Keith Beesley]

The boombox and the Walkman arrived on the scene at about the same time, IIRC: late 70s-early 80s.

[Ed S.]

However: The walkman originated a new type of music sharing: the Mix Tape. Didn't you ever carefully put together a cassettetape of favorite songs for someone you liked or loved, or had someone do the same for you? That's missing from the ipod experience. The smartphone and ipod/pad screens are causing more narrowly-focused people than the walkman did. You can see eveyone staring at a tiny screen now, oblivious to the sights and sounds of the real world around them. That's true isolation.