Spotify launched in a flurry in Europe in 2008. Already people are ripping off the idea (Music Unlimited anyone?). But at it’s heart, Spotify is cloud computing at it’s purest. It has hit many burdens on it’s bumpy rise, but if they can smash through those walls, there is so much potential.
One idea I have is a Spotify pub jukebox.
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Not sure about Australia, but computerised jukeboxes are pretty big in the UK. For a pound or two, you get a number of songs. They usually have all the current chart hits. Some even have every chart hit ever!
(Some still have CDs on spindle racks. Pretty sure they can be improved too…)
But every chart hit ever is small beans compared to the entire Spotify catalogue. And if we are playing in credibly possible fantasty – it should have every song legally relased, right?
The Jukebox, as it currently stands, pays for itself. The pounds that are put in pay for the machine rental and sometimes the broadcast fees.
But having Spotify around should save a lot of money on those machines. Also theoretically – more choice should lead to more use. Less overhead and more use should hopefully lead to cheaper use, and could lead to even more use!
It can be done now. Plug in a cheap laptop onto your pub PA. Pay your broadcast fees. Ask for 20p for a song request from your patrons. See how it goes.
Pretty soon, it just looks like a jukebox, but powered by Spotify.
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It’s the best way to think about technology. What if you could start from scratch?
If you were to invent a jukebox system for a pub, it would be crazy for you to come up with a new computer interface. Or to do the deals to license the music. Just use Spotify.
And let’s go really nuts. Lets do it on a iPad (because if a child can use one, so can a drunk). And the buttons are all colorful touch screen things. And it feeds jukebox recommendations. Imagine – if you will – it’s hooked up to a central pub jukebox server and you can see what others have listened to? Charts. More.
What about recommendations? How many time have you had three song choices but could only come up with two? How good would it be if, after a couple of beers, someone could help you with that decision.
There’s some start up costs but you can see the power behind the idea.
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And there is a gap in the market coming – music for retail. Pubs. Shops. Malls. Etc. And these big emerging music services should be looking to service them.
Back in the day, big chain department stores woud send out cassettes for in-store play. It was a way of controling it. An anodyne cassette of Christmas music would be sent in November, intercut with some store IDs. Sent out to all stores everywhere – the same cassette.
Let’s make it a playlist. Let David Jones or M&S insert their store IDs. They can open a Retail account and all stores can log in.
Then you have stores like Urban Outfitters or those with a cooler vibe. Maybe the store workers can choose from a pool of tracks, to suit their tastes.
Cloud computing should, in theory, destroy the CD. Yet people still bring in CDs to shops to play over the PA. And their song choice is restricted to the half a dozen CDs they bring. Even a 160GB iPod seems hopelessly restrictive.
Why not set them free?
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I love pub jukeboxes. I am fascinated by what makes it on there. Who’s behind it. What people pick on them. I have put quite a few dollars in them myself.
But cloud computing is coming. We can see this now.
In every situation where you can hear music, a service like Spotify should be able to supply it. It’s whether they can tailor their service to the needs of retail. And if they can convince retail to support Spotify – and generate another important revenue source.
And if Spotify doesn’t – how about Napster? Or Music Unlimited? Or Zune? Or Rhapsody? Any streaming service, really.
I deeply believe technology will lead to a better world. It’s why this column exists. And technology could reinvent – and improve – something as simple and humble as the jukebox. If we just think about it.
Much like pop music in the 60s, no one was quite sure how long this internet fad would last when it started. Now – as we live our most of our lives online – there are big questions to be asked. The biggest one is this:
What happens to all our digital data once we die?
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It’s a hot topic for the last few months. I thought I would summarise the challenges and add some thoughts of my own.
The biggest question seems to be one of control. We leave behind a sea of digital data. We are told not to give out our passwords. But what happens to all this once we die. For those left behind, how do we access it?
Sadly – there is no one answer. The legal rights of estate executors versus the terms and conditions of social networking sites is a delicate fight. The law doesn’t side with either one, but it is sliding towards the side of the executors.
Recently, (link) Oklahoma passed a state law that gave an estate executor automatic control of the deceased’s digital accounts. But it is not that easy. Yahoo is very specific about their terms, and how you cannot transfer your account. If Yahoo was not an American company, the waters would murk further.
So just leaving it to your will may not be enough, from a legal standpoint. And there are other loopholes. Some technical (your will is public record, so leaving actual passwords in there, like bank ones, is a bad idea) and some cultural (leaving your estate to your children who may not be able to login to your accounts).
Evan Carroll and John Romano, authors of Your Digital Life (link) have lots more to say about this matter. They decry the lack of industry standard, and suggest you pick a “digital executor”. Someone who is digitally savvy and protect your legacy.
And what legacy is that? When you count them up, it’s a lot.
For most people, the obvious online profile you have is social media. Mainly Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and that lot. One step further is bloggers.
Then there’s User Generated sites. Flickr photos has been one that has been under contention. But there’s also YouTube.
Then services that are tied crucially to money. Your bank details are probably the most important. But there’s also Paypal. eBay. More. And various stores that take logins. Amazon. Music subscription services. iTunes login.
Games are another important one. Games like Warcraft and Second Life uses an invented currency with real life value. Although not based on money, equally crucial is any email accounts. Gmail. Hotmail. Yahoo Mail.
Then, there is simply the mark you make. Comments made on blog posts. Photos where you’ve been tagged. Music tastes submitted to Last.fm, or Apple Genius.
And there’s plenty more to go. Who owns all this data?
None of these services have a standard to do with death. Each treats security issues, and hence issues around accessing and transferring accounts, with varying seriousness. But with no standard to follow anyway, how can they come to a consensus?
(And what happens when we move beyond passwords? Are fingerprint scanners that far away?)
To try and counter this are the folks behind Digital Death Day (link). They are in their second year and have had two conferences so far and more to come. People from various walks of life are trying to get something done, and getting input from everywhere. They haven’t begun to work out a standard yet though. That is still very far away.
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Beyond the rules of how things can be accessed – what should you do once you have access? How do you want to be remembered online? And how would you like to remember people you knew?
Beyond the lack of legal consensus – what is the cultural one? Is it weird for dead people to be on Facebook? Surely there’s a data issue as well. When Facebook touts it’s 500 million figure – are any of them dead?
And if we do get rid of someone’s facebook – what happens to their photos? Their comments? Their tagging? Is that not rewriting history?
And who owns it? If I put up a photo of you on my Facebook, is it mine – or yours? Do my executors have the right to decide what to do with my photos of you – ones that are tagged of you and on your profile?
Actually, Facebook is ahead of the game. They have a Memorialisation feature, which can be activated for people who have passed. It gets rid of things like contact information, but allows people to post messages. But no other service offers anything like it. I’ve not even heard of any other company looking into it.
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And who said the internet was permanent anyway? In fact, far from it.
MySpace is falling apart. What happens when it falls apart completely? What happens to my profile? I’ve lost my old Geocities sites. Even URLs expire after a few years. Inactive Twitter profiles can be claimed. Some sites even clear out unused profiles after a while. How can you hold onto something that’s always moving?
If you were to freeze my digital life 5 years ago, it would look very different to my digital life now. What will it look like in 5 years time? And with even the devices we are using to view the web going through massive changes – will we leave any mark at all?
Maybe in a way that we don’t want. It maybe deleted from the web, but I’m sure I will always exist in Google’s database somewhere. That, for me, is even more worrying.
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What will we leave behind? Everything? Anything?
Will my grandchildren be able to find my Last.fm profile, and see what my most listened-to artist for the week ending Feb 14th is Matthew Sweet? Will they even find this blog? What will they even do with that information?
What happens after we die? That questions seems to get bigger every day.
Skype is 8 years old this year. Figures last year suggest that Skype has more registered users than even Facebook. So why do so many of us still make phone calls? Why hasn’t VOIP (Voice Over IP) services like Skype and Facetime taken over?
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As we explore the answer, let’s step back for a second and look at a parallel technology – SMS. I still get heaps of SMS’s. And I send plenty too. Yet – pretty close to all those text messages are going to a phone with email technology. Why didn’t I save myself a few cents and send an email instead.
There are heaps of reasons.
1) Most people don’t have emails refreshing all the time. SMS’s actually ping people immediately.
2) Although most people do, I can’t be sure their phones take emails. And people use different emails.
3) And hey, sometimes I just don’t have their email.
4) I’m usually connected to a phone network, but not always a data network. This is also a black hole on the other side – what if they have bad data reception on the other end?
5) A smaller point, but many parts of the world doesn’t have the smart phone penetration and network services of a data network.
So plenty of reasons. Which is a shame because it makes so much sense. Why do we need two technologies to send simple text messages from my iPhone to yours? Why do I need a pipe called phone network and a pipe called data network?
Well, because data networks are kinda shit.
It still makes ultimate sense though. I think the SMS will die in the next five years – if not earlier. Because all those problems I laid out above could be fixed easily – and we’re not even waiting for technology to catch up.
I think it will have to be a short-message-direct-service that is not email for one. I think email and SMS type messages should not be mixed. They do different things. So we need to dump the phone number AND the email address. We need something new (Skype username? Twitter username? ICQ number? Who knows).
Then it just needs to run on a data network, not a phone network. And it is automatically set to “push”, not wait for people to login and download. It is a lot like instant messaging, or general chat programs – when you’re logged in!
When someone invents this app, they are going to make a billion dollars.
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Which brings me back to Skype – the most famous VOIP service. Why hasn’t Skype killed the telephone?
Look at the pros. It costs nothing (above your net connection). It’s gotten to the point where the voice quality is pretty good, and certainly better than most mobile phones. You can do video chats if that’s your thing.
So what are the cons?
The big one is that no one is on Skype all the time. Or even most of the time. Skyping is an event for most people. You make appointments with people to Skype. And not everyone has Skype. 600 million users might sound impressive. But over 4.6 billion people have mobile phones!
All the reasons that SMS clings onto life apply in some way to it’s voice driven older brother.
But the tide is turning.
Most people I know hopped onto Skype to escape the cost of overseas and interstate phone charges. In 2009, Skype made up 12% of all international phone call minutes – a stat that has been trending up for years.
The dam is going to break, and VOIP services wont be seen as for overseas calling only. Apple’s Facetime is really pushing the personal, emotional value of their video-over IP service, not the price.
And maybe Skype’s reputation has been set, and some other upstart will take VOIP into our homes and every day life. But I think Skype works great – I hope they survive.
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In 2003, I spoke to the CFO of the big company I was working for about VOIP. We also discussed Microsoft’s Netmeeting, and the bad quality of the audio. Nowadays, microphones and even cameras come with laptops. But those early uses of Netmeeting brought up another con for VOIP – one that is harder to define.
This one has more to do with human nature. And the wonderful David Foster Wallace summed it up nicely in his masterpiece Infinite Jest.
In that book, videophones took off initially, then people gave up on them, because they felt uncomfortable. This might seem like a trivial point, but I think it’s important. AND, I think it’s weirder without video.
People still feel weird barking conversations at a computer. For over 100 years, we have spoken into a handset. Using VOIP services is like speaking aloud.
I have a theory that for Skype to really catch on, they should build a handset (with two jacks, one for the mic, one for the headphone). If people could speak into a handset, they don’t care if it’s a computer or a phone that routes their call.
Which is also why mobile VOIP is the next big thing. Skype, Facetime and a number of other competitors are jumping onboard Android, iPhones et al. The ultimate handset.
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Some of you may know, Skype actually has a mobile phone. The Skypephone didn’t catch on, for all the same reasons that Skype has not really caught on as a whole (and I’m not sure if it’s still in production).
Computers can be just about anything you want it to be. It’s amazing how long it’s taken us to adopt the computer as a phone. But the future is already here. Data networks are just around the corner from a big jump (into 4G speeds, and free wi-fi becoming more commonplace). And everyone’s getting a smartphone.
And it’s up to us, as a whole, to take advantage of it. If you’re not on there, why should I be? We all have to jump in – together.
A small, not heavily reported, revolution happened last year. It’s one that’s bound to have bigger ramifications. The USB wall socket power-point arrived.
Charging and power will be the last battle for the Wire. Wireless internet, wireless keyboards and mice, wireless speakers – the wire has almost been killed off. Except in the area of actually charging and powering things.
The story of electricity and wall sockets is a long and twisted one. When electricity first came to Britain there was no standard. A power plug in London would differ to one in Manchester. That might seem funny and old-hat now, but we haven’t gone that far.
Adaptors are still big business. Most major regions in the world have their own system – and sometimes their own voltage. Even getting the shape of your plug right is not enough. There has been a small movement towards a global standard but the it hasn’t caught on.
Which brings me to one of the truisms of technology – if you stand divided, something new is going to come and bowl you over.
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And the world of wall sockets and chargers does stand divided. I’m sure I’m like most people, and own dozens of chargers for all sorts of things. And for most of the time, it’s one charger for one device.
The charger that comes for most mobile phones charge at such a low rate that it’s useless for anything else. My external hard-drive and my portable iPod speakers take the same charge. Sadly the pin connector are different sizes. I wish the laptop charger I keep permanently plugged-in could plug straight into my iPod, but alas I have to have the laptop on.
Then of course, there are the devices I bought in other countries.
I understand the differences in voltage. I understand that design plays it’s role. But I also see that I have dozens of devices all designed to do the same thing – get power into a device – and no one has yet put them together.
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Maybe USB is the thing that will bowl over this divided technology. I think we can see this happening in all sorts of places.
Take the Japanese mobile phone. In Japan, the GSM network does not exist, meaning most phones outside of Japan do not work in Japan. So – will Japan adopt GSM? Or will non-Japanese networks adopt the Japanese technology? It’s no to both. A bigger technology will come along and do the work of both. That technology was 3G.
(And as much as 4G is being worked on, surely Wi-Fi will kill it?)
It’s the same way with power plugs. I think USB is the answer for the immediate future. We are already heading down that road.
I have a bunch of adapters, and quite a few things to charge when I travel (a phone, a Blackberry, an iPod and a laptop usually). But thanks to the laptop, I only need one adapter. Everything else is charged through the USB ports on my computer.
Which is one step away from having a USB power board. Which is one step away from plugging the USB cable straight into the wall. Which is where the world is going.
Some of the nicer hotels in the world already offer a USB power plug. Companies like FastMac and Sockitz offer a home solution to replace or augment your existing wall sockets. Some new houses in Silicon Valley have a couple of USB wall sockets as standard.
The EU also passed a law last year, finally standardising mobile phone chargers, using the micro-USB technology (that is, micro-USB to plug into the phone, not the wall). No more needing a new phone charger for every phone you own. You can use your old micro-USB charger, and plug it into a computer. And it doesn’t have to be phones. It can be any micro-USB powered device (like some cameras).
At the very least, not every mobile phone in the EU has to come with a new charger every time. Which can only be good for the environment. The dumping of electronics is a big and dangerous business (see links below).
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Another charging technology that is emerging is the charging mat. Basically a small, safe, mat that you can keep on your desk that charges your mobile devices. Most times your mobile devices needs a case that works with the mat. Without plugging anything in, you can place your cased device on the mat, and it will charge.
It speaks to one of the great problems with USB, which is that fucking wire. I hate wires. I really do. The future of the charging mat is uncertain – so far the uptake has been slow as the devices seem too niche and expensive. But it’s the wireless thing that people love, and it’s something to keep an eye on.
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Also last year, student Min-Kyu Choi won the British Insurance design award for his folding plug. It’s pretty clever. It beat out lots of great ideas, because his idea was so simple, and so startling. It goes to show that the power plug can still be improved. And that in it’s current state it is a problem. And I’m glad clever people are still looking at it.
Obviously you can’t replace all the plugs in your home with USB ports today. But that day is coming. Technology keeps improving. Battery life will improve. Charging times will improve. Standards though, that needs committee.
But I’m sure we can all agree on this: We are sick of owning that many chargers. We are sick of playing around with adapters. We are sick of tripping on wires.
And if the USB port can’t get it’s act together, something else will come along and bowl that over too.
Scott McCloud coined the term “the infinite canvas” in 2000, a hopeful vision of what the internet could become. I have waited ten years for it to come to life, and it’s only occurred to me that Google Maps has done just that. Maybe, just maybe, others will follow.
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The infinite canvas is based on a basic idea – your computer screen is not a PAGE, it’s a WINDOW. Linking is a basic building block of the internet, but too often websites split an article over several ‘PAGES’, when it’s possible, even easier, to let an article run as long as you can possibly want.
It’s not just articles, of course. The net is a digital world. The infinite canvas can be anything. À la recherché du temps perdu can run completely uninterrupted. Andy Warhols 24 Hour Movie can be one file. There are no limits. Except the limits we create.
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And it’s interesting how many limits we create for ourselves. For all the noise made by certain musicians about how their albums should be heard in order, they don’t supply their albums as one 40+ minute sound file. There is no reason they couldn’t – but right now, the online world is still replicating the CD.
Most interesting is print. The idea of flicking pages seems to go against what digital technology is about. Yet there’s not an eBook reader in the world that doesn’t tout it’s ‘page-turn’ functions. For me, it seems a bit like my iPad having an image of a vinyl album spinning, and I have to place the needle on record at the right point to play a song.
Magazines are the worst. The Branson owned iPad only magazine The Project is an awful hybrid of the worse of print and digital. It was far too easy to get lost in the magazine, as every page had it’s own links that lead to videos, pop-ups and other madness. Suddenly you found yourself three clicks down, on page 8, and no way to get to page 9. It was like Inception.
It’s as if the people behind The Project took a magazine and made anything that could be annoying into something very annoying. The cover flashes and buzzes – for no reason. Other than it looks cool. There are also full page ads in these new magazines. It has completely lost sight of getting a consumer to be wow-ed by the content – the articles, the photos etc.
(It will be very interesting to see if the second iPad only publication, Murdoch’s The Daily, is any better, or if they are still tied to the physical page)
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It’s a 600 year old fascination with flicking pages that needs to be lost. But there are things standing in our way.
One of the reasons sites make you click through several pages for one article (something Rolling Stone Magazine online [link] loves) is because of their page view numbers. Those figures lead directly to their advertising rate-card. And money talks.
Also, we are not used to it. Long, long blocks of text seem scary. But we have been inventing ways of making text more readable for centuries. Type-setting. Margins. I personally use bold text mixed in with little breakers (“—“) to try and break up the eye.
Another is computing power. Loading a 7 volume, 1.5 million word Proust collection is still going to dampen your computer’s resources. But computing power is not slowing down any time soon. The same goes for internet connection speeds – another obstacle that will be defeated in time.
I still argue that the problem is our cultural memory. I look at digital booklets for albums and I see multi page pdfs that replicate a booklet. When I could have one big graphic that looks like the back of an album cover. I wont have to flick through and get lost.
We forget that pages were a compromise, not an advantage.
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Which brings me to Google Maps. It is the purest form of the infinite canvas.
Think about it! It didn’t try to recreate a street directory with pages. It doesn’t ask you click on the left to go left. Or to flick an imaginary page. You simply SCROLL. You use your screen like a WINDOW (or magnifying glass), and you naturally scroll up to go up, down to go down.
As anyone with a smartphone can tell you, maps are super cool on mobile. They are so easy to use, no pages involved. And everyone I know uses them with ease.
And maybe Mobile is a key. It’s annoying to drift through 6 pages to read one Rolling Stone article on a mobile. The advertising model needs to be recreated anyway.
More importantly, with both computers and mobiles providing different experiences of the same site, hopefully content will become more powerful than form. And we can finally exterminate every bit of Flash on the internet.
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Google Maps is an infinite canvas. Utilising and embracing the limitless, barrierless landscape online, they have created the best mapping experience humanity has ever, ever had.
Now it’s time for everyone else to embrace that limitless-ness. Imagine books, music, movies without our own artificial breaks. Less clicking around, more scrolling around. It is my hope for the web going forward. Literally – a world without end.
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Scott McCloud is a pioneering technology thinker and a comic book writer and artist. His website is: – http://scottmccloud.com/
30 for 30 – as I reach my fourth decade of being, I’m writing about some of the things that made the three that came before what they were. 30 – mostly trivial – things that have been a part of 30 – mostly trivial – years.
30. BLOGS
Kraftwerk live - you just know one of them is blogging
I have spent half my life making websites on the web.
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I love what has come to be called “blogs”. I’ve been with them ever since they started – GeoCities, blogspots, tumblrs, wordpress, livejournals and all.
I know a lot of people are on the fence when it comes to this brave new world. At worse, it’s narcissistic indulgence. But I like it. And either way – it’s a big part of our culture now. Our stories are now on public record.
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I started ‘blogging’ in 1996, with a GeoCities website. It mainly focussed on my obsession with comics. I became a part of the online community for the Legion Of Super-Heroes, my favourite comic at the time. I looked after a chronological timeline of these fictional heroes. I also did a complete annotation on the Batman mini-series The Long Halloween. Basically, I was a comic nerd who expressed his interest. And I met a few nice people too.
My interests changed to music, and so did my website. I started simply listing bands and posting photos of various things. It was so crude it’s ridiculous. Eventually, I decided the Australian band You Am I were my favourite band. My website became a shrine to both them and me – and renamed “You Am I And Me”. It started me on another journey completely.
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The internet was very exciting at this time, especially if you had very particular interests. I jumped straight into the music online scene – webrings, fansites, newsgroups and more. Someone would decide to devote themselves to a band and create a page. Lyrics, photos, tabs and more.
You Am I were a big band and there were several other fan sites at the time – I thought I’d just be one of them. I did work hard on mine, in the way a teenage kid might customise their car. Pretty soon I was transcribing articles and scanning in CD single artwork. I think I did a pretty good job.
And the other You Am I websites fell away. It’s a continuing theme – dead sites. And I just kept at it. Newer You Am I sites started and fell away as well. Eventually, I decided to make it more seriously. Paul Stipack, who ran the fantastic Oz Music Central, and I made a deal. I would take some of his You Am I work and create the new You Am I Central.
My story with You Am I is for another time. But the You Am I site led me to meet the band, and the band officially endorsed me. It was something I became known for in the Australian music scene. I was also the common person for a whole country’s worth of You Am I fans.
It’s an amazing thing, in retrospect, that my little blog – of a lonely nerdy kid in suburban nowhere, Sydney – became somebody to some people. Just by putting myself out there with what I loved. And I got to meet people with the same interests. That You Am I website launched me out of being a nobody into the world of the Australian music scene.
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Websites were very basic back then. I started with various wysiwyg editors – culminating in the long forgotten HotDog 4. But I also learnt how to do it all the HTML stuff from scratch. In my prime, I could make amazing websites with just a text program.
I also taught myself some javascript. I became very efficient at photoshop. No one taught me, I just spent hours in front of a computer. And instead of playing games, I made stuff. I made websites.
I developed a style and a sense of what I liked and what I didn’t like. For example – I still hate flash. Flash sites are all looks and no content. It’s graphic designers taking over – not people with something to say. Maybe it’s the Scott McLoud learning – just because it’s visual doesn’t mean it has to be just graphics.
I also read a lot of design blogs – the best being Jeffrey Zeldman. The man is a true internet pioneer, but I guess he might be considered old-school now. But there was a real movement there – the world of web standards and cross compatibility. Was a time you had to create a site for Netscape and other browser users would be damned.
I’ve not kept up my skills. I don’t have the time. I would come home from school and type code for 6 hours. I don’t have time to do that anymore. I can still make a decent website. But I lost it with php and mysql – database tables essentially. It’s the new backbone of the web, and I’ve lost the touch.
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I maintained a personal page throughout this time (called Pop-aghanda), hidden away in the You Am I site somewhere. The internet was big news, and my work as getting recognition. I appeared on Triple J, age 17, talking about You Am I and then being the guest on a webchat with ‘fans’. The Australian Sound and Film Archive got in contact and asked for my permission to archive the site for historical importance.
People started to ask me about doing work for them. The only people I wanted to work for was Ivy League Records – my favourite Sydney label at the time. I volunteered to do their website and did so for a couple of years. It led to more contacts and more involvement in the music world. Along with working at a record shop and a radio station, websites became my way of contributing to music.
I would help other sites all the time. I would review and scan in rare CDs I had for other sites. I was more than happy to answer people’s html questions if I could.
I think of that generation of web creators and think – we were just obsessed kids. Instead of drawing guitars in our schoolbooks, the web let us make something that could be seen by others. With no recourse too. I could put anything I wanted online, and the only people who would find them are people with similar interests.
That era, the turn of the century, rise of the fanpage. Someone needs to write that story down. Maybe it’s too recent, but it’s a hell of a story.
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You Am I and Ivy League fell away for me as well. I handed the reins over to others. Popaghanda died a slow death (although I have it archived somewhere – and it has my top ten albums of 1999 as an article). I had started my own band, and my web publishing and graphics skills concentrated on that.
I’m not sure if anyone is really monitoring trends for the web. For me, it seems there was an era where the web tried to be serious. After years of flashing graphics, clip art and fluoro colours – it seems like the web was starting to be a serious thing. Every small business got websites, and they couldn’t look like a 17 year old’s blog. Domain name costs plummeted, and a generation of web designers graduated and got to work.
Then there was MySpace, who took over a lot of what GeoCities and the like stood for. Free, easily formatted and easily linked – MySpace gave people an easy online identity. But MySpace was limited, even though it had a blog feature – some people want more than an identity.
Which was me. Having always written online, made lists and just basically being a self centred modern man – I needed something more than MySpace. So I started Gluing Tinsel To Your Crown, a random writing blog.
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The design aspect of blogging has taken a backseat – at least for me. It’s to easy to use templates, and most of them are quite pretty. I know I can pay a bit more – get a domain name, take charge of the designs. But then I would be a ‘blogger’, and I have nothing against that – I just have a lot of other things to be first.
What has changed is what I write about – and how I approach it. I read a lot of blogs, and surf them randomly too. I know a lot about what I don’t like about blogs. Reactionary pieces. Repeating links and nothing else.
So, I approach blog writing with a philosophy. Yet another McLoud-ism comes into play – write like everyone you know is dead. I’m starting to get these long, loosely connected essays down. Writing in columns – like this 30 for 30 thing – also works, I think. Personally, I don’t like graphics to get in the way, and I like my text big and readable.
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So ends 30 for 30. It’s back-to-basics blogging for me. Putting myself out there. Starting conversations. Keeping a record. Friends who have read an entry or two have taken time to talk to me about it, if it suits their interests.
I often ask people about what they write on their blogs too. It’s a give and take. All the links on the right are friend’s pages – and well worth checking out. Blogging isn’t for everyone, but I would love to see more people I know expressing themselves. If you have a blog and I’ve not included you, please let me know.
The annual top 10 albums of the year will follow in December, and a new writing project starts next year.
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Leaps And Bounds started in 2005, ostensibly a travel blog, named after the Paul Kelly song. After what I learnt from Douglas Adams, I became a fan of blogging for bloggin’s sake. After mucking about with blogspot and then tumblr, before finally settling into wordpress.
I flirted with other things. An online version of my old paper zine (Strum) or my technology blog (Great Leap Forwards). But I realise I don’t have an agenda to push anymore – I’m not making websites for single bands. I’m writing to write.
Blogging technology has became pretty great as well. It was really easy to merge in previous blogs, even from other services. Now Leaps And Bounds is a happy little log of the last five years.
It’s not the last five years that’s interesting. It’s the next 30. It’s the fact that I’ve lost my very first few blogs, but I don’t think that’s possible now. This record will exist for all time.
30 for 30 – as I reach my fourth decade of being, I’m writing about some of the things that made the three that came before what they were. 30 – mostly trivial – things that have been a part of 30 – mostly trivial – years.
28. DOUGLAS ADAMS
Douglas Adams
I adore the works of Douglas Adams, and the man himself.
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This 30 for 30 thing would not exist if not for Douglas Adams.
It was a thoroughly Douglas Adams moment in my life too. I was at my parents house, ready to leave for Paris for the first time. I was thinking, I need to buy The Salmon of Doubt, the posthumous collection of Adams’ writings found on his computer.
I had yet to read it, even though I was a huge fan (it was, after all, promoted as an unfinished novel. Who wants that?). So I decided I would rummage another book out of the boxes I had in my parents garage.
And there it was – a copy of The Salmon Of Doubt.
A perfect, unread, 1st edition paperback.
How?
I’m not the kind of person who buys something and doesn’t know it. No price tag marks of any sort to suggest it’s origin. No one else in my family would have bought it. It wasn’t even amongst the other books in “A”. It was in a completely random box – the first one I looked at. And I was just thinking about it.
The only Adams-esque explanation is this – The Salmon of Doubt has become a very important book in my life. It started on that day. And some time in the future, I will come across a pristine paperback 1st edition. And a wormhole. And I will know to throw the book into the wormhole, leading back to my parents garage circa 1996, ready for my 25 year old self to discover.
(Slightly odder still is I have no idea where the book is. I’m even less inclined to lose things)
As far as I’m concerned with things related to Douglas Adams, the most extraordinary explanation must be the one.
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The Salmon of Doubt is not usually considered the most inspiring work by Adams. But, along with half a novel, there are a series of random writings. Wonderfully written, long rambling essays about certain subjects.
I remember reading these articles and thinking – this is exactly what blogs should be. Long, meaty, well written, point driven pieces. Adams jumps around and goes on tangents, always circling the same points. He usually write about technology too – something I love.
So since that time, I have been trying to write blog posts like Adams’ writings in The Salmon Of Doubt. If you are interested in reading a really great essay (Hooray! Essays!) you can find some on his site, and I would start with Frank the Vandal (http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/980707-00-a.html)
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I discovered Adams through the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, much like everybody else. I’m guessing this was around age 11, and I was already discovering Monty Python, Red Dwarf and various absurd British comedies. I found it at Campsie Library, when I was devouring so many books. Then I found all it’s sequels – and loved them too.
Those books were, of course, and marvellously, surrounded by Adams’ other works. First was the Dirk Gently books, which I also loved – and the BBC have just announced they will finally make TV adaptations of the two novels. The Meaning Of Liff and the Deeper Meaning Of Liff – a dictionary for things that needed names.
Then there’s the one non-fiction book – Last Chance To See.
I absorbed it all. And I am not the only one. Every time I see the phrase ‘Don’t Panic’, I think of Adams. And ‘42’, yet another Adamsism that has broken through to the mainstream. The glorious Babel Fish. His popularity has never waned.
—
Hitchhiker’s is, of course, awesome. It is such a deep reflection on the interests of Douglas Adams as well.
I read and re-read the first four books many times. I waited patiently on the library waiting list to read the fifth book – Mostly Harmless. I bought a collection of the first four books, and I eventually found first edition paperback copies of all of them – going for almost £40 each now.
Around that time, the ABC screened the 1981 BBC TV version. Even better was the South Bank show special – a very absurdist take on Adams’ life story, intercut with recreated scenes from his novel. It’s the only time I’m aware that Dirk Gently has been portrayed onscreen.
It was easy to keep track of Adams’ works, because he was almost always first in the sci-fi books section. New stuff stood out. The ridiculous Illustrated Version to the weird and underwhelming Starship Titanic.
I kind of lost track of Adams’ by the time he died in 2001. Although I was really sad – I guess I was at an emotional age about my heroes.
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One of the last things Adams worked on was to make the Hitchhiker’s movie. After mulling over a film version for decades, it finally happened in 2005.
I remember seeing it at the cinemas, and loving it. Even with the 1981 TV version, it felt like they mostly got what I imagined the book would look like.
The movie had some major flaws – it’s rambling plotline is just almost impossible to shoehorn into a movie. The wit in Adams’ narrative is missing. It seems they spent all the special effects money went to the last 30 minutes of the film.
But there were lots to love. The cast was mostly perfect. Martin Freeman – the man was made to play this role. Zooey Deschanel is great as usual. Sam Rockwell made a great Zaphod, except no-one’s managed to get the two heads thing right.
And it looked great. The Vogons were perfect. The showroom of planets is honestly breathtaking. In the end, they just nailed the strange humour, and lost none of the heart in the characters. And just that big screen feel. After 15 years and seeing that – it was amazing.
No one’s discussed a sequel, even though the movie made plenty of money. I would love to see it. A hundred scenes I would love to see. Milliways. The krikkitmen at Lords. And most importantly, Arthur and Fenchurch flying over London.
Maybe someone will reboot them again one day. It seems to be the trend. Special effects just get cheaper, and maybe we can get something that looks like the Harry Potter films, and a commitment to make all of them.
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More than his work, I love Douglas Adams the person. It’s a side I first got to see when I read Last Chance To See. It’s a non fiction book, an account of Adams’ adventures with zoologist Mark Carwardine, searching for the planets most endangered and rare species. I didn’t finish it the first time, but years later returned to it and loved it.
Adams’ fell in love with these bizarre animals. In fact, they didn’t seem that far from Babel Fish and other weird creatures that came out of Adams’ imagination. In the book, he describes them like he would a Vogon. And he never loss his passion for protecting life on the planet.
In 2009, his good friend Stephen Fry recreated his journey with Carwardine for BBC2. The sequel, also called Last Chance To See, finally showed me a moving Kakapo. And great that this side of Adams’ legacy is getting it’s day in the sun. If he had lived, maybe he could have been a animal lover version of Michael Palin.
For me, it showed me that the amazing things I found in books were equal if not less than the amazing things you can see in life.
—
Adams had many other passions too. He was a big Beatles fanatic. He hung out with rock stars like Dave Gilmour and was one of the few outsiders in the Monty Python inner circle. He was an outspoken atheist before it became fashionable. He made a short but significant impact on Doctor Who.
He was also a Mac enthusiast, and a technology nut. He understood programming language, energy technology and computer science. According to Stephen Fry, Adams was the first person in the UK to own an Apple computer.
Adams loved technology. He loved the internet. He dabbled in video games in the mid 80s, and supported the advancement for technology. And for technology’s sake. He didn’t just love typing, or games, or graphics. He loved that these devices and how they can fit into our lives.
Imagine what Adams would make of the world today. He loved the internet, and prophesised we would live our lives on there. A comment that mirrors a line in the 2010 movie the Social Network. Imagine what Adams would make of Facebook.
Best still is the iPad. Let’s face it. It’s essentially the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy come to life.
Adams has a theory about progress, that works in three parts.
1) Everything that exists before you’re born is “normal”.
2) Anything created between ages 0-30 is very exciting, and hopefully you can make a living out of it.
3) Anything created after 30 is abnormal, abhorrent and against nature.
So it’s only an age thing that makes us scared of progress of technology (or movies, or music etc). And when new things occur in technology, I think of Adams, always pushing ahead to the front of the line to see what was happening. I hope I can be there too.
—
May 25th of every year is now Towel Day. It’s a celebration of Adams, of Hitchhiker’s and his other works. It takes his name and inspiration from, in the Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy world, the single most useful device ever – a towel. I’m aware of it every year, but I’ve not been brave enough to carry a towel with me in public.
But its’ something that is growing. A UK thing that is spreading out slowly to dozens of countries around the world, according to towelday.org. It’s yet another sign of how important and ahead of his time Adams was.
—
If you only know Adams for his sci fi humour, here is a great introduction to his activism.
30 for 30 – as I reach my fourth decade of being, I’m writing about some of the things that made the three that came before what they were. 30 – mostly trivial – things that have been a part of 30 – mostly trivial – years.
24. SCOTT MCCLOUD
Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics, discussing 'visual closure'
I have been a fan of Scott McCloud since high school. Writer? Artist? Technology guru? Genius? All of the above.
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Of all these articles I’m writing for this 30 for 30 series, McCloud will be, by far, the most obscure.
But his influence on me is possibly the biggest of all my personal idols. Every day, I approach work, thinking and life in ways influenced, if not out right mimicking, Scott McCloud.
Let me tell you about him.
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McCloud’s most groundbreaking work is Understanding Comics. Published in 1993, it was the first really serious study on the artform of comics. And it reflected the all possibilities of words and pictures combined, not just men in capes and tights.
This is the first wonderful thing I learnt.
Comics don’t equal superheroes. Don’t equal kids entertainment. That little flying in theseat pocket of a plane, with instructions to put on a life vest – that’s a comic.
Although he started in the world of comics, he went on to talk about digital distribution, micropayments and how to distribute comics online. The things he discusses can be applied to any discipline.
McCloud is, in short, the smartest person I’ve ever read discuss the sweet point of Art, Commerce and Computing.
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Revelations abound for those who LOVE to take things apart.
Q) Ever wonder why people don’t use photographs to illustrate comics? Or maybe a better question is, why do people avoid doing that, or when they do, why does it seem so jarring?
A) A picture in a comic is not an instant. It can’t be. A picture in a comic suggests movement and time – especially when there is speech. Imagine a panel when two people are talking to each other.
If you think about it, the left side of the panel is not set at the same time as the right side – the two people aren’t talking at the same time.
Q) Why don’t people draw comics more realistically?
A) Because the more realistic you get, the less you relate to a character.
This is an AWESOME fact.
We see ourselves in everything.
Look at a power point.
Doesn’t it make you think of a face?
Look at a car.
Doesn’t it make you think of a face?
Draw a circle. Add two dots.
Doesn’t it look like a face?
Yet, compared to the Mona Lisa, it looks nothing like a face.
Which is the great point of all this. Mona Lisa looks like…Mona Lisa. A smiley face looks like…us.
Look at the greatest cartoon characters of all time. Homer. Mickey. You can put yourself in their shoes. Dick Tracy however, was larger than life.
The lesson; the more you abstract something, the more you relate to it.
And then there is a further abstraction – the word FACE.
Look at it.
FACE.
Something in your mind tells you to think of the concept of a face. Just like a circle with two dots does. Words and letters are the ultimate abstraction of an idea.
There is a lot more stuff like that in his books. Lots more.
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McCloud’s is an art theorist and takes things apart. In understanding comics, he defines several styles of panel jumps, then graphs the number that occur in popular American comics and popular Japanese comics. Here, we see some scientific data on the difference between Manga and Superheroes.
Here are two things I love that McCloud has said about art.
1) Art can be split into 4 groups.
Classicist – those who admire form and beauty.
In music I would say artists like Cole Porter, James Taylor and Crowded House.
Animist – real gutteral, expressive, uncensored
In music I would say punk rock, but also people like Neil Young.
Formalist – exploration of the form and launguage of the art
I would say the Beatles and the Beach Boys, their exploration of sound and song structure. Later, people like Sonic Youth, Beck and people who played around with form.
Iconoclast – where the message and the personal experience is king. Very much the look-at-me kind of art.
I would lop in Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and expecially Joni Mitchell in here.
(Of course, not every fits neatly into a square).
You find this in comics. Films. Books. Everything.
More of this in the video below.
2) What the fuck is art anyway.
Get me drunk and ask me to define art, and I will give you the Scott McCloud definition of art.
Firstly though – there is a lot of pop psychology on what art is. Some say as long as you call it Art, then it is. Others look at Jackson Pollack or Norman Rockwell and decide it’s not Art.
McCloud puts his definition back at the reasons of creation rather than the result.
I’ll try and sum up this complicated notion as best I can.
We all act, and those actions have reasons – most boil down eventually to our survival instincts.
Maybe I’m trying to impress someone. There are lots of ways I can do it. I can buy them a present. I can make a speech in their honor. And at the end of the day I could be trying to impress them to get money, get a promotion, or simply sex (or companionship). Boil it down to food and reproduction – our most basic instincts.
But what if I decided to paint a picture to impress this person? Well, all those other reasons to impress still exists. But there’s a new reason – I like to paint. I like the form and I like that way of expression. In that new space, that spurs creation, is Art.
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McCloud in the late 90s onwards became the poster-boy(/man) for the Digital Revolution. One that never quite came, but he was an investor in micropayment companies (that are once again getting traction), defined the possibilities of an infinite canvas and most importantly, removed expression from form.
In short, he’s a very forward thinker.
When the rest of the comic industry panics about the death of print, McCloud stuck his neck out there and said – hey, it’s about the stories, not the paper.
Just as with music. A song is not about the CD it comes on (although, that stuff can be fun). The CD was always about the promise of some great music.
In his 2000 book Reinventing Comics, when iTunes was but an idea, McCloud clearly laid out the steps that we have followed. The elimination of the supply chain. Direct-to-fan relationships.
But he also pointed out some of the reason bigger companies are needed. Production budgets is the big one. In music, the record companies have access to expensive studios and film clip budgets that a MySpace hobbyist cannot touch. There are others in the book.
McCloud was an early Mac adopter (like another person I will write about in a couple of weeks) and discusses technology a lot. I learnt ideas like Moore’s Law from him.
But McCloud has great things to say about technology and it’s predictable future.
Computers will get more powerful.
Computers will get smaller.
Resolution (monitors, speakers) will get better.
You can tell Apple knows all these sorts of rules. McCloud also spends a lot of time discussing the web and using it as a form of expression.
But if there’s one piece of thought I use every day that McCloud gave me, it’s this:
Look for patterns.
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There is so much more. I always devour the latest McCloud book. Even more amazing is none of these books are written in words. They are written as comics. There’s no fight scenes, or curvey babes. It’s a science/art book written as a comic, using icons, text, graphics to tell te story in a more powerful way.
—
But McCloud’s next book is a return to fiction. He’s keeping it close to his chest, but it’s set in New York.
Which I am excited about. Because as much as I’ve learnt from him, he is also the writer of possibly my favourite comic ever – Zot!. I wrote about Zot!previously.
If you are a comics fan, especially with an alternative bent, you must read this.
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So, that’s a brief intro to the world of Scott McCloud. An amazing writer and illustrator. And an amazing futurist and thinker. He continues to be ahead of his time, and I think his influence is only growing.
At any given time in my head, it’s swirling with ideas – for songs, stories sometimes. But sometimes about technology, web and interaction. And sometimes about business, how we work and where the world is leading.
Art. Technology. Commerce.
And the place where the three of them meet.
And sitting there is Scott McCloud.
—
Below is a talk McCloud did for TED, which touches quite nicely on some of his big ideas.
30 for 30 – as I reach my fourth decade of being, I’m writing about some of the things that made the three that came before what they were. 30 – mostly trivial – things that have been a part of 30 – mostly trivial – years.
13. IPODS
The "photo" iPod
Like everyone else, I got an iPod. It changed the way I listened to music.
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I was planning this blog for later in the series but circumstances dictated otherwise. My iPod died. Gone. Just wiped to zero. 5 years of play counts, artwork, playlists etc – no more.
It was a 160GB silver ‘classic’ – which made it sound dated as soon as it came out. It’s travelled with me everywhere, and I used it for around 5-6 hours a day – at least. In the last week, it’s battery life was down to about half an hour, and it would turn itself off for no reason. Until today, when it decided to give up the ghost for good.
So, goodbye iPod. 24,000 songs, all gone. It was fun.
—
I was late to the iPod. Most of my friends had one by the time I did. I even bought one for a girlfriend before I got one for myself. I only really decided to get one when I decided to do some travelling. So I bought a 60GB one, in 2005.
Oddly, I did get an early mp3 player as a present. It was very hard to use. It made me resist “going digital” for a while.
I prepared by ripping some music to my computer before I even got one. In an ill made decision, I decided to start with Elvis Costello. Not just ALL his albums (up to Delivery Man, 21 of them), but all the Rhino bonus discs. Get Happy itself was 50 tracks. My iTunes had 20 versions of Watching the Detectives, what with all the demos and live versions. When I finally got the iPod, it was basically an Elvis Costello iPod.
So I wiped all that and started again. I tried to be more democratic about it the second time around. Basically, I would put one album on by every artist I really loved. Live with that for a bit. Then choose another album by them, and spread the net wider to artists that I liked. Then again, another round. It was like the nerdiest NBA draft picks.
I managed to hit 24,000 songs on my iPod, including several thousand I deleted over the years, before she died. I think by the end of it, every Elvis Costello album was back on there.
—
I wasn’t that excited by the iPod to begin with. I remember looking at it, on my sofa, in my house, thinking, I kind of just want to put these albums on my stereo. But I figured it might be handy.
The click-wheel was clever though. That alone got me past the gate. Much like the iPhone later, the iPod wasn’t only easy to use – it was kind of fun to use. Looks at me scroll!
I quickly took to it. I could listen to music in the garden! I could listen to music when I go for a smoke! I could listen to music on that walk from the train station to home. I could even listen on the train.
In fact, the biggest negative is that when I got an iPod, it killed my reading. My reading has still never recovered. Maybe it might now.
I got the first ‘Photo iPod’. Hilarious to think of it now. I remember how Tom, an early iPod owner, had this two colour one, with buttons across the top. We used to listen to stuff in his car. And that geeky pleasure of thinking ‘mine is cooler’.
The best thing about this new iPod was that you could load colour album covers on there and it would come up on the screen. This was exciting at the time! And it wasn’t that long ago. It was the same year the FOURTH Harry Potter film came out. Yet it was exciting to get colour on the iPod.
I remember showing my friends who were musicians their own albums, with artwork, on this iPod. So wanky. But we were all fascinated.
This first iPod travelled with me overseas. I have hundreds of memories of walking through Europe, listening to music. Maybe I missed some of the sounds of a city, but as a music nutter, I couldn’t be happier.
60 GB turned out to be not enough. I had to keep deleting things. Finally, I had a car accident and found myself in a wheelchair for months. I got an iPod and meticulously imported all the info across to a new, 160GB monster. It took weeks.
—
I keep breaking headphones. Glasses and headphones. Geez, I have spent so much money on those things. And I approach headphones the same as glasses – buy something cheap because it will break or you will lose them.
I bought a really expensive pair once – Seinnheiser somethings. It had a case. A very complicated folding motion would collapse the headphones and you would twirl the lead around it’s body. It was as fun as folding a map. I had it for two weeks before I left it in a cab.
So I usually go for the second cheapest pair there is. I use James’ theory on this. If you buy the cheapest one, everything about it is bad. But if you buy the second cheapest, it means at someone thought about these headphones on some level (could have just been the price).
No wonder they keep breaking all the time though. Usually the bit near the pin, that goes into the iPod, goes first. But sometimes the headphone itself falls apart. But dozens of pairs of those is still cheaper than that expensive pair.
In recent years, I’ve discovered (cheap) in-ear headphones. Odd at first, now I’m used to shoving rubber things in my ears. Sure it blocks out a bit of noise and sounds stronger, but it just stays in the ear and bit better.
—
My second iPod, the 160GB monster, lasted me until this week. It recorded 5 years of my listening habits. I got quite obsessed with looking at it statistically.
For example:
Most played song was Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen. 78 plays.
Of 24,000 songs, only 1000 had never gotten at least one play.
However, half that collection was 4 plays or less. So there’s a lot of junk on there.
Poor ‘Sunday Girl’ by Blondie, was added to my iPod 4 years ago, and I never listened to it once.
I would add roughly 20GB of music to my iPod every year.
It was fun, looking at listening habits through maths. Well, fun for me anyway. I’ve lost all that now.
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For the last few years, every morning, I listen to five songs that have zero plays. I get a lot of albums, and I still buy plenty of them. It’s one of many tricks I had to explore my collection.
And it’s great to have all those songs in your pocket. Whatever thought tickles your fancy can be there. God knows there have been times when the sun is shining and the only thing that could make me feel better is to hear Make Me Lose Control by Eric Carmen. And before the iPod, how would you ever hear that song?
Mainly though, I would just shuffle. Thousands of songs, what will fate dial up? Whether I’m on the a crowded train on the Circle Line, or walking around Berlin, lets see what song I can pin this memory to.
—
Trish mentioned today that I was taking the death of my iPod well. For some reason, it didn’t really matter to me all that much. I did try for an hour to save the thing, but in the end it was easy to let go of. I think, maybe, I was in need of a change.
The iPod death was always the biggest worry. I remember Jon, with an early iPod, losing everything, and paying big money to computer experts to no avail. I have almost lost my iPod many times, and those were scary moments.
I’ve put Born to Run (the album with Thunder Road on it) on my new 160 GB iPod. I’m going to put some records I’ve loved from this year. And start the draft again. Five years ago, the first Velvet Underground album I reached for was The Velvet Underground & Nico. I’m thinking now it’s got to be Loaded. But even part of me thinks maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe it’s time to find another new path altogether.
Maybe the shuffle thing should go too. Maybe, like many of my friends, I should just rotate my collection. Who knows. Without music being my job, I don’t need half of that stuff in my pocket. Hell, having gone through cassettes the CDs, I’m not even sure iPods will last that much longer.
So, It’s kind of exciting to start again. I get to rediscover all my music. Or maybe I will finally get some reading done again.
A new, irregular column where we remember ideas in music and technology whose time has come…and passed.
We’ve been wanting to do this column for quite some time. Some brilliant journalist at the BBC just gave us the excuse we needed – they asked a 13 year old to compare a Walkman with an iPod. The article is great (“It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape”) and well worth checking out. We wont repeat it here.
But how about the Walkman then? It does share one very important similarity with the iPod – it became so ubiquitous that the brand name became the product name. Just as people call most mp3 players ‘iPods‘, most portable cassette players are “Walkmans“, despite it being the name of Sony’s version of the ‘Personal Stereo’. The one from our youth was an Aiwa.
That BBC article uses a very old version of the Walkman. By the time it was in it’s last years, the Walkman looked pretty cool – and still does today. Check out the WM-EX170 as an example. And there were plenty of pretty colours as well, and lots of great designs.
A cool, later era Walkman
The most groundbreaking thing about the Walkman was not the Walkman itself. Sony also pioneered the headphone buds, getting rid of the big ear enclosures. We have a pair of those things in our ears right now. These new lightweight, portable headphones were sold with the Walkmans (seems so obvious now), making them instantly accessible. So in 1979, Sony Japan released it’s masterpiece. Although it wasn’t an immediate hit, it caught on and 50 million were sold by Sony alone in ten years.
(The iPod has sold almost 200 million. Crazy.)
Suitcase record players and boom boxes aside, the Walkman was a truly portable music player. Later versions easily fit in a pocket, or at least a school bag. It opened up new possibilities for this format called the cassette. It was also sturdy – people could and did jog with Walkmans. Sure, it doesn’t fit the same number of songs, and other silly points. But how we used the Walkman is pretty similar to how we use the iPod today. Casual portable listening. And hey, our (Aiwa) Walkman could record. That durability didn’t last into the iteration – the Discman. That spinning CD just couldn’t handle bumps.
The Walkman continues as a brand. It’s Sony’s line of mp3 players. It’s one of the most popular mp3 players in the world after the iPod, iPhones, Zunes, Creative ZEN, Sandisk and about 10 others. It’s a good idea to reuse the name, but a Walkman will always be about cassettes for us.
A great history and museum of Walkmans can be found at Pocket Calculator – http://www.pocketcalculatorshow.com/walkman/history.html. Well worth a read, if only to see how tough it was to sell the name ‘Walkman’ outside of Japan.
