A closer look
Sony's introduction of the Walkman in 1979 sparked a massive social panic among commentators who firmly believed that portable music would completely destroy human interaction and ruin society; pundits argued that allowing people to listen to cassette tapes in public with headphones would lead to widespread isolation, antisocial behavior, and the total collapse of community engagement, and looking around today at a world where everyone silently stares at their smartphones while wearing noise-canceling earbuds, those paranoid 1980s critics were actually entirely correct in their predictions, with the only thing they got wrong being their severe underestimation of how desperately we all wanted a socially acceptable excuse to avoid making small talk with strangers on the bus
