This essay was written as a part of college assignment. Q: Name a technological invention during your childhood and its impact.
There were addtional questions that served as hints which I dont have currently. Though the ideas was real, this is a work of fiction.
Every morning, songs from a decade ago blasted through the rooms of our home from a huge BOX also known as Radio. All the elders in the home started their day happily enjoying the decade old-songs and programs from the BOX, whereas the young(including me) hated the music and grudgingly crawled into the school uniforms. This huge BOX always stayed in its location and would regularly get love(cleaning) from the elders meanwhile the young tried relentlessly to shut it down by manipulating what seemed like an innumerable number of buttons and knobs on it but in vain. The options from radio were pretty limited; you either have to tune into your location’s radio station and listen to whatever they are playing or play music from cassettes. Radio being the common entity to all the people of the home, it always played something we the young don’t want. There was always this dream of listening to whatever we want and we so dreadfully craved for it. It felt like heaven on those rare occasions when the young were home alone listening to whatever they loved to. The freedom of choosing the music, based on your mood is inexplicable and it helps as a refreshment after coming from school especially for young.
To us, heaven only lasts for a short period, and we were so (dis)content with it we stayed (un)happily in our bubble that the idea of the freedom to listen what we wanted when we wanted – most significantly – to play it wherever we wanted to seemed a little too far off. That all changed after I received the Walkman a portable cassette player equipped with headphones as a birthday present from my uncle in my 5th grade. This rectangular solid box transformed how we listened to music, in effect transformed our lives. Walkman has revolutionized the way we perceive music and technology. It not only impacted the industry but also various other parts of human life. It put Japan and Sony at the forefront of technological innovations. It streamlined assembly line production where mostly women were employed, bringing economic independence to them. So yeah, it is safe to say Walkmans’ effects can even be felt today.
The walkman instantly became the part and parcel of my life. With the limited availability of walkmans around, I became an overnight star in my class. More often people would queue to have access to the spare audio jack on my walkman. And I happily shared it because it brought numerous perks along with it. Being an introvert myself Walkman was the godsend opportunity for me to socialize. People were always nice to me reserved seats during lunch breaks and commutes. And it was a perk I could not refuse. Before walkman, I only used to talk to a couple of people in the class but later I started conversing with almost the entire class. That was a great moment for me and I should thank my Walkman for that.
Walkman for me transcended the meaning of freedom, and to the world, it gave a technological leap from vinyl records to cassettes. Walkman was seriously constrained by the ability of its storage type- cassettes. Cassettes being a “compact” case consisting of a length of magnetic tape that runs between two small reels and can store only a limited number of songs. Nevertheless, Walkman kickstarted “Generation Me”, who preferred to listen to their personalized mix-tapes. It is a great advancement in personalized music space. I never felt bored as I could get my Walkman with me all the time and listen to whatever I wanted, to my heart’s content.
The walkman enabled anyone to listen privately without judgemental looks. Walkman has brought out a music revolution as you could take your custom music anywhere you went. From mixtapes to multiple cassettes you had a ton of options at all times. There’s no doubt that it cemented itself as a part of pop culture. It leads the way for the Discman, the MP3 player, the iPod, and our smartphone. One can’t deny how much the cultural transformation inspired by the Walkman paved the way for the revolutionary technology of its successors. But even though the cassette tape has reached technological obsolescence, you can still walk into your local music store and buy a cassette Walkman. So it seems even in the era of digital music, we want legends to live forever.
Walkman helped me explore various music artists from across the country without language barriers. We constantly exchanged our treasured collection of cassettes. This device has kickstarted the whole personalized music recording industry that we see today. Overtime cassettes have given way to Compact Disks (CD) which became a popular choice over cassettes given its huge storage space and compactness. But it was always imperative and common knowledge that a storage device and player are independent. This setup had various pros and cons but, no-one debated it as there was no alternative to it. Everything changed after Apple released the iPod that can play files in the then-relatively new .mp3 format – a file codec that provided small file sizes with acceptable audio quality. It caught on, quickly becoming the industry standard.
When I got an iPod as a birthday present when I was 13, I stopped using my walkman. I passed it on to my cousin I started using the iPod. Initially adjusting to using the iPod was a tough phase because walkman buttons are more intuitive and easier to use but later I started enjoying the iPod. One thing that I liked using the iPod over the Walkman is the variety and count of songs I could listen to and its size.
To a child born today, the walkman can be described as the following: The idea of listening to our choice and listening to it privately may seem trivial now but that was not the case before the invention of Walkman. Walkman didn’t represent a breakthrough in technology as much as it did a breakthrough in imagination. Walkman had (only) five buttons on top of it - play/pause, eject, forward, backward, and power on/off buttons and a slider to increase/decrease the volume. It had two audio ports which were a lifesaver. (considering that current devices deemed as most innovative don’t even have one!). Even with batteries, cassettes and headphones attached the device felt light-weight and so much easier to carry around in “pocket”. The simplicity of the device is immaculate and there was not a single reason not to fall in love with it.
Post-walkman age the old in the house grudgingly gave up on their attempts to make us listen to the BOX. Their worries were not unfounded. They felt this new Walkman thing would increase the gap between them. But we proved that having the ability to choose, the ability to have an option, and the ability to have me-time helps relationships grow. It feels like they made peace with the fact that no matter what they do, change is inevitable. The young in the house even helped a few elders to set up their walkman. The BOX still lay at a prime location in our house, and can still screech and scream. For me, a glance at the BOX always brings the nostalgia of the transformation that we all felt with the introduction of the walkman. The BOX has seen its glory days but could not fight back the walkman, it was simply made to give way for the change. Though walkman has conceded to various other technologies now, it was the first device that gave us the taste of freedom. And for that, we would always be grateful and there is no denying that.