Personal Stereo

A history of the walkman and a picture of that era (1980s) when portable music was still a novelty. Now we have iPads and iPods and Smartphones, but back then they were a groundbreaking technology. And how they succeeded by removing features. Well worth the read.

Roy Amara was the president of the Institute for the Future.  A scientist and researcher his most famous legacy is Amara’s Law, the idea that the impact of technology tends to be overestimated in the short term and underestimated in the long term.  The story of the invention and proliferation of the personal stereo is a perfect example of this theory in practice.  It is a story that has been told many times in print, though perhaps never as readably as Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow’s warm, accessible account.  The real success of this presentation is the way Tuhus-Dubrow manages to convey the bewitching novelty of the portability of music, something that is now difficult to imagine as not being a feature of everyday life, but which at the time was a genuinely revelatory experience.  Appropriately, the analogy of a drug is used throughout the book, the personal stereo, after all had the power to changes users perception of the world, it was a deeply personal experience and highly addictive.  Keeping with Amara’s theory, the immediate reaction from some was one of panic, often regarded as a dangerous fad, there were fears that the Walkman could be responsible for a range of societal catastrophes from generational deafness to the decline of western civilisation from a dangerous proliferation of individualism.  Fast forward 35 years and the capacity of portable entertainment has increased exponentially from 120 minutes of audio to whole libraries of music, film and reading material.

Though often told as a simple story, that of Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka’s desire to listen to music without disturbing his family, in reality the invention of the personal stereo is far more complicated, contradictory and non-linear.  Tuhus-Dubrow nimbly navigates the contradictions – Sony themselves endorsed multiple versions of the story of how the Walkman was invented – as well as the multiple players, including interviewing Andreas Pavel who is credited with inventing a personal stereo system that pre-dates Sony’s Walkman.  It’s very much a social constructionist approach to technology, one that also acknowledges non-linear progression.  The personal stereo involved no new technology and in fact involved removing functionality from existing products, so despite being a new product, the innovative element was in how technology was used, not created.

Personal Stereo, part of the Object Lessons series, is immensely readable,  fast moving and well structured.  Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow’s voice is distinctive and one gets a sense of her personality and individual relationship with the personal stereo through the way she tells the story without it ever being obtrusive or indulgent.  An object lesson in how to write about technology well.

I grew up in the era that the walkman was at its height of popularity and I so remember how it was such a wanted item.  So for me this was a very fun book to read about its history.    This was a very well written and not dry history of a piece of tech that changed the world in its own way.  I highly recommend this book.