Gibson and Walkman
Nov. 14th, 2007 08:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
infrogmationInteresting short interview with S.F. writer William Gibson from Rolling Stone
One point I find interesting is his observation on the Sony Walkman:
"The very first time I picked up a Sony Walkman, I knew it was a killer thing, that the world was changing right then and there. A year later, no one could imagine what it was like when you couldn't move around surrounded by a cloud of stereophonic music of your own choosing. That was huge! That was as big as the Internet!"
I am just old enough to remember the Walkman phenomena and the technological state before it, and had a very different impression.
I had a Walkman (or one of its early clones) and enjoyed using it, but at the time regarded it as a minor improvement of existing technology with a large dose of marketing hype.
Walkman article on Wikipedia
When I was a little kid in the 1960s, there were already "Transistor" radios about the size of a pack of cigarettes that one could listen to with an earphone jack. (I take it that the technology was fairly new at the time, and I recall slang use of the term "transistorized" to mean something made improbably small.)
By the early 1970s, there were cassette tape recorders just slightly larger than a hard-cover book that one could easily carry with one hand, and listen to either with the built-in speaker or through an earphone. (I saw cheap cassette player/recorders at Radio Shack within the last year that look little changed from those of more than 30 years ago.)
The Walkman-- okay, they made it smaller, in part by elimiating the built in speaker. And instead of an ear-plug, a pair of tiny cheap-ass headphones. OK, but I rolled my eyes at the advertising that proclaimed it somehow revolutionary.
Perhaps the stereo rather than mono is what particularly impressed some people? I consider stereophonic sound reproduction nifty, but when the audio isn't particularly high-fidelity to begin with, a minor point.
One point I find interesting is his observation on the Sony Walkman:
"The very first time I picked up a Sony Walkman, I knew it was a killer thing, that the world was changing right then and there. A year later, no one could imagine what it was like when you couldn't move around surrounded by a cloud of stereophonic music of your own choosing. That was huge! That was as big as the Internet!"
I am just old enough to remember the Walkman phenomena and the technological state before it, and had a very different impression.
I had a Walkman (or one of its early clones) and enjoyed using it, but at the time regarded it as a minor improvement of existing technology with a large dose of marketing hype.
Walkman article on Wikipedia
When I was a little kid in the 1960s, there were already "Transistor" radios about the size of a pack of cigarettes that one could listen to with an earphone jack. (I take it that the technology was fairly new at the time, and I recall slang use of the term "transistorized" to mean something made improbably small.)
By the early 1970s, there were cassette tape recorders just slightly larger than a hard-cover book that one could easily carry with one hand, and listen to either with the built-in speaker or through an earphone. (I saw cheap cassette player/recorders at Radio Shack within the last year that look little changed from those of more than 30 years ago.)
The Walkman-- okay, they made it smaller, in part by elimiating the built in speaker. And instead of an ear-plug, a pair of tiny cheap-ass headphones. OK, but I rolled my eyes at the advertising that proclaimed it somehow revolutionary.
Perhaps the stereo rather than mono is what particularly impressed some people? I consider stereophonic sound reproduction nifty, but when the audio isn't particularly high-fidelity to begin with, a minor point.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-11-15 07:19 am (UTC)Only difference is, the Walkman was delicate and was always at risk of falling off my belt. My Shuffle fits on my lapel, and weighs half an ounce. And it doesn't go through piles and piles of AA batteries. And I've got an audiobook in there. So what I really gain is not having to buy, store, or carry around as much as I would have had to in the past.
The video iPods, on the other hand, is fucking magic. Even if you can dismiss it over the "more convenient/affordable version of existing stuff", there's a huge difference between a Walkman that hangs off your belt and plays a cassette, and the portable VCR's and television sets in 1994. Certainly not something a middle class teenager could take on the bus.