From Walkman to Facebook: How Tuning Out Led to Tuning In

The Walkman is utter . Long live the Walkman .

More than thirty year after trip a music and modus vivendi revolution , Sony has formally retired the Walkman in Japan ( there is still a lone model for cut-rate sale in the U.S. ) . A Sony engineer named Nobutoshi Kihara designed the original model for Sony Colorado - chairwoman Akio Morita , who was looking for a path to listen to his favorite Opera during his many hours of airplane travel . Soon the portable cassette player was brush the world and , of class , precede to the very gadget you ’re probably carry in your pocket the right way now .

The Walkman and its offspring , such as the iPod , completely changed the way we live music . And even more compelling , these devices also had a vast impact on the fashion we interact ( or do n’t interact ) with each other . Before the Walkman , listening to medicine was quite often something we did together . earphone and portability change that . The very same sounds that had been a cornerstone of our societal experience of a sudden transformed millions of us into isolated walking automaton .

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And here ’s the ironical part : Three ten later , we find ourselves seeking societal connections through the very devices that isolate us in the first place .

I got a Walkman when it was still called a Soundabout ( I ’ve been an isolated zombie early adopter since I was a kid ) . The first - generation version of the player actually had two headphone jacks and a button that you pressed so that your listening pardner could try you let the cat out of the bag to them via a humble built - in mike . Using a microphone to talk to a headphoned person right next to you seemed idiotic . Today , that feature makes complete sense . How many times have you used a computer or telephone to communicate with someone a few feet away in the next elbow room or carrell ? But back then , the great unwashed need no part of the dual headphone jacks . These original portable music instrumentalist sequester us and turned take heed to music into a solo performance . And we wanted it that way .

Today , the more people you have listen to medicine , the quieter it stupefy .

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I ’ve cognise my wife since we were in high school . We ’ve been get hitched with for more than a decade . And we ’ve never once looked at each other and said , “ They ’re playing our song . ” And after talking to a few other couple , I do n’t think we ’re all that unique . She has her songs . I have my Song dynasty . Our only innovative combining weight to birth a partake in song is when one of us retweets the other .

Of course it ’s not just about married couples wondering when they should trip the light fantastic . The Walkman introduce a deep layer of static to the medicine - listen experience . We all of a sudden need a new way to discover the line our friends like . During the pre - Walkman geological era , we had a round-eyed means of finding out what our friends were take heed to . We could pick up it .

In the last several years , we ’ve see a dramatic chemical reaction to this isolation . No , that chemical reaction has n’t been to dispatch our headphones . rather , the reaction has been to use more engineering in an attempt to get the older band – our friends , workfellow , etc – back together . Now , all the major euphony services , from LastFm and Pandora to Mog and Apple ’s new Ping , enable you to share medicine with friend .

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Most of us still mind alone , but we ’re by no means disconnected . My old Walkman has been replaced by my new iPhone . Sure it plays music . But it also lets me make calls , log on to Twitter and Facebook , part photos , play plot with booster and send messages through a sort of religious service . I ’m still wearing my earphone , but now my music player comes loaded with the tool I postulate to claw my direction back to a state of societal fundamental interaction that is a virtual echo of life sentence before I took my first manner of walking with a Walkman .

When I was a adolescent , my portable music actor was a creature that I used to feel entirely alone even in very public and social configurations . That was before my earbuds germinate into buddy lists . Today , my portable music player makes it almost impossible for me to ever be alone .

Still I inquire if we would n’t be better off occasionally get rid of the earphone , turning off the smart phones and return to an eld when we gathered around some over - sized utterer and social networking actually meant being together .

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