When you went walking with your walkman plugged in your ears then, you would be among the popular folks. I remember only those with fathers, uncles, cousins who were working in Saudi (Arabia) had it easy to get the Sony Walkmans.
I was just lucky to have a father who didn't work in Saudi but had the means to buy me one. :D
As the Sony Walkman turns 30 today, I can't help reminiscing my Sony Walkman days.
It worked like a digital camera. Since I had it with me when I go to school, instead of taking photos, I do interviews and record them to my Sony Walkman. That was why, I was active in school journalism before.
It developed music-remixing skills. You can't bring all the cassette tapes with you, do you? Well, you can but it would be too cumbersome. So what I did, or many of us did, was to record my favorite songs in one cassette tape. I think because of this, Sony also came up with a cassette player with double compartments (if that's how you describe it) where you can play using one compartment and record with the other one.
It was a gadget for PDA. Not the PDA that means personal digital assistant that we know today, but a gadget for public display of affection. Long before the iPods came, we could already share music with our BFs/GFs with one earphone each. In fact, I got my first Sony Discman (which is the successor of the Walkman) from the boyfriend. =)
So there! I guess, it's Sony's loss that they forgot to innovate. The company was pioneering in mobile music so to speak. The article on PCWorld describes it aptly, "The Walkman encapsulated more than just mobile music. It represented the possibilities of what we could take with us. And how we could capitalize on mashup music."
[Photo source of Walkman]
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