An encounter with the past

A thirteen-year-old boy in England gave up his iPod for a week to use a thirty-year-old Sony Walkman instead.  The results are strangely delightful:

From a practical point of view, the Walkman is rather cumbersome, and it is certainly not pocket-sized, unless you have large pockets. It comes with a handy belt clip screwed on to the back, yet the weight of the unit is enough to haul down a low-slung pair of combats.

When I wore it walking down the street or going into shops, I got strange looks, a mixture of surprise and curiosity, that made me a little embarrassed.

[. . .]

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

Do read the whole thing; it’s short and surprisingly well-written.

I’m old enough to remember – and to have had – Walkmans, though of a somewhat sleeker variety than the ominous silver doorstop with which young Scott Campbell was saddled.  It’s easy to forget that there’s a whole generation of kids out there now who were born in such scandalously recent years as 1996 and for whom the trappings of my particular childhood are as foreign and appalling as were those of the generation that preceded mine.  I came too late for 8-Track and Beta, but the children’s shows I watched still made jokes about them.

Perhaps decades from now urchins will look back with disdain upon the clumsy necessity of using one’s fingers to operate electronics.  They’ll pause between infusions from their subcutaneous nutrient packs to express their scorn to their real-time data feed’s subscriber base.  Somewhere, a man will sigh.

Meanwhile, the third of the world’s population that has no access to computers or high-level electronics will continue to live a real and notably human life.

Tomorrow Series update

Having finished the second book in John Marsden’s Tomorrow Series (I wrote about the first one here, a few days ago), I can now definitively state that the series is by no means suitable for any children ever.  Things that were only hinted at in the first book, in terms of both violence (which is somewhat defensible in context) and sex (less so), become almost unbearably graphic in the second.  It will probably be like that for the rest of the series, too, so we’ll see about that, but in the meantime I’ll just reiterate my call for extreme caution on the part of anyone intrigued enough by the concept to pass the recommendation on.

More festing

The line-up for the free portion of the Ottawa Bluesfest – to take place in the ByWard Market downtown – has been announced, and it’s sort of exciting.  A swell bunch of performers are set to perform in the no-doubt choked-to-a-standstill market, but there are two who have caught my eye and will surely give me cause to brave the crowds.

July 9th will see a free performance by George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars.  Not typically my sort of music, but, well, I enjoyed it back in high school and I don’t hate it now by any means and it’s George Clinton giving a free show.  I’d be foolish not to go.

July 13th will present a horse of a distinctly different colour in the form of Serena Ryder, whose music I’ve never really heard before but about whom my enthusiastic mother (among others) has been unable to say enough.  I suppose a free show will be as good a way to get acquainted with her as any.

All in all, this whole thing is shaping up to be very interesting.  I’ll start saving now for next year’s Festival, in fact, so that I can attend as much of it as I want to.