Personal Stereo

by Tuhus-Dubrow, Rebecca; Schaberg, Christopher; Bogost, Ian

• ISBN13: 9781501322815
• ISBN10: 1501322818
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2017-03-09
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Personal Stereo takes us back to a time when a handheld device was both a marvel and a danger. Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow illuminates how personal stereos like Sony's Walkman changed forever public space and boring tasks, and shows how the initial reception of portable cassette players can help us put our hopes and fears about today's devices into perspective. Brimming with stories of audio technology, public space, personal affect, and global economy, Personal Stereo ranges over an intricate landscape of cultural touch points that together make the personal stereo an iconic piece of postmodern equipment.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Author Biography

Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow is a Contributing Editor at Dissent. Her writing has appeared in Slate, The Nation, the New York Times Book Review, Boston Review, and the Los Angeles Times. She was previously a contributing writer for the Boston Globe's Ideas section, a columnist for the urban affairs website Next City, and a Journalism and Media Fellow at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Section 1: Novelty
Section 2: Norm
Section 3: Nostalgia
Index