Gibson and Walkman
Interesting 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.