The War on the Walkman

Summary

🗓️ On this day in 1979 the Sony Walkman was first released, marking its 46th anniversaryThe Sony Walkman is now an icon of the 1980s, eliciting nostalgia for the ‘good old days’ of owning music, rather than renting it. Affection for the device is now universal, but that wasn’t always the case…The sudden rise of headphone wearing pedestrians - spurred by Sony’s lightweight headsets (17% the weight of others) - caused unease about an unfamiliar new world quickly coming into view.Some said it was a sign of a continued rise of Reagan and Thatcher style individualism. Cultural critic Allan Bloom deemed the Walkman "a nonstop... masturbational fantasy” in his 1987 book ‘The Closing of the American Mind.’ Neo-Luddite John Zerzan saw the Walkman as part of a modern trend that encouraged a "protective sort of withdrawal from social connections" and Thomas Lipscomb, chief of the Center for the Digital Future, equated it with the euphoric drug "soma," from Huxley's Brave New World, creating, as he put it, "an airtight bubble of sound" that was nothing but a "sensory depressant." In other words it all felt ‘a bit blackmirror’ as one might say today. (A collection of quotes collected in this 1999 Reason Magazine article)The Walkman, critics claimed, was more than just music to one's ears; it was a tool of societal disconnect and for government officials and law enforcement a danger on the roads, because it limited the hearing of drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. After a number of accidents involving Walkman headphones, numerous states across the US swiftly put into effect or proposed restrictions, many related to headphone use while driving or cycling. Among them were statutes in California, Florida, Georgia, , Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington.The New Jersey township of Woodbridge went a step further, forbidding not just driving or biking, but even crossing the street while wearing Walkman headphones. The price for breaking this prohibition? A potential two-wee...