From Walkman to Infoman

Man used to walk from place to place, and in between, he just walked. The Walkman changed all that. In 1979 Sony gave people a taste of what it would be like to walk, or run, or sit with music wherever they were at the time. The age of plugging our ears and blocking out the rest of the world had begun.

The Walkman revolutionized the portability and personalization of music.

Entertainment became an accessory, as personal as a purse or a wallet. We were freed from having to go to a radio or tape player or recording device. And like all freedom, once the genie was out of the bottle we kept wishing for more.

Now the iPhone is making all information come to us.

To get to the internet, to see every photo we have, to watch videos or live broadcasts, make calls, take email, send text messages, access the Library of Congress, to get real-time information to anyone anywhere at anytime—literally every bit of content you can think of is right at hand. (There are probably some things you can do with an iPhone that I haven’t imagined. By the way, if you think of some, send them to me.)

Nothing is formal with the iPhone.

It’s like a canteen for communication to be taken out and used when even the slightest bit of knowledge update is needed. Who needs to sit down to anything anymore? The etiquette of information transfer is breaking down and becoming completely personal. Everybody wants it their way, and that’s how they’re getting it. The relevance of information is tightly tied to the immediate—and the response to that information is instantaneous and broad.

Content shelf life is diminishing rapidly.

Content for mass appeal is becoming homogenous and thus irrelevant. The iPhone is insatiable, and it’s making us that way too. We must have an immediate update, upgrade, release, and rerelease, perpetual beta—and new becomes old almost as soon as it becomes new. All of this is hitting us on a massive scale to the point of being globally connected and totally accessible.

From the Walkman to Infoman—there’s no turning back.

We’ve gone from walking to the music we like, to running as fast as we can into a future of total informational portability. It’s here and it’s amazing. Almost overwhelming.

I think I’ll go take my dogs for a walk, and don’t try to call me—I’m taking a short break from being an infoman.

That’s it, from the edge of the world.

Bob