{"id":116540,"date":"2025-08-13T09:56:55","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T13:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/?post_type=ftm_article&p=116540"},"modified":"2025-08-13T10:53:02","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T14:53:02","slug":"sony-walkman-technophobia","status":"publish","type":"ftm_article","link":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/consumer-tech\/sony-walkman-technophobia","title":{"rendered":"The forgotten war on the Walkman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

First released in 1979, the 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\u2019t always the case\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The sudden rise of headphone-wearing pedestrians \u2014 spurred by Sony\u2019s lightweight headsets, which were 17% the weight of others’ devices \u2014 caused unease about an unfamiliar new world quickly coming into view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Vintage<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Some said it was a sign of a continued rise of Reagan- and Thatcher-style individualism. Cultural critic Allan Bloom deemed the Walkman<\/a> “a nonstop…masturbational fantasy” in his 1987 book “The Closing of the American Mind.” Neo-Luddite John Zerzan saw the Walkman<\/a> as part of a modern trend that encouraged a “protective sort of withdrawal from social connections.” Thomas Lipscomb, chief of the Center for the Digital Future, equated it with the euphoric drug “soma,” from Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” creating, as he put it, “an airtight bubble of sound” that was nothing but a “sensory depressant.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, it all felt “a bit Black Mirror,” as one might say today.\u00a0(Credit to this 1999 Reason Magazine\u00a0article<\/a> for this collection of quotes)<\/p>\n\n\n