An icon fades away: Walkman

A Walkman was the ultimate device to have back in 1990s. I remember my first experience with a Walkman: That effect has not been matched by a lot of other experiences. I carried 3 of them during my teens and college years. Here’s a tribute to the iconic Walkman which is now history.

Almost precisely on the ninth birthday of the iPod, Sony Corp. announced that it will cease production of the Walkman, the iconic portable cassette player once seen clipped onto belts or waistbands of joggers around the world. The timing may be sheer coincidence, but its significance is unmistakable. The iPod may not have laughtered the Walkman on its own, but just as the Walkman did in a previous era, the iPod has become almost a generic term to refer to the portable music players of its time.

On the surface, the demise of the Walkman seems really to be about the demise of its medium of music delivery: the cassette. In 2009, only 9% of all the music sold was carried on cassettes, and most major companies have stopped producing pre-recorded tapes. But the Walkman was about more than just the cassette; we don’t remember, for instance, the brand of an LP player the way we do the Walkman.

Perhaps it was because the Walkman pulled off the ultimate human dream for music: to free it from the constraints of space and time, to be accessed wherever and whenever the urge strikes. That is singularly the Walkman’s legacy; the iPod, for all its innovation, has merely carried that legacy forward.