I saw an interesting thing on the bus yesterday. A woman sat next to me with a Walkman. You remember them, right? A personal, portable cassette tape player. The ones they had before the mp3 player, before the Discman. The Walkman.

It’s amazing to see how much the technology has changed, in my very short life time. When I was little my parents had a number of tapes, and a large collection of records. I remember being admonished not to jump up and down, because it would make the record player skip, or being absolutely fascinated with the tiny toothbrush used to clean the needle. Then there was the tape player, which could record things off the radio, and, if you pressed the right combination of buttons, would play the tape forever, in a continual loop.

Then, when I was ten or so, my grandparents sent a compact disk player, and a cd to go with it. It was cajun music from Louisiana. One of the songs was a guy being happy because when he needed his money, it was still in the bank, as his wife had left him and wasn’t there to spend it for him. The first cd I got, for my birthday in sixth grade, was Ace of Base.

And then there was Napster. (and Audiogalaxy and Bearshare and Kazaa and Limewire and and) And now there’s ipods.

When I was a senior in high school I was part of a radio show, and the station manager showed me some eight tracks one time…