ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the mass users of the Walkman. It investigates the archaeology of a portable media player, the Walkman, and its development from a portable audio cassette player to the Discman, from the perspective of audiences – real users of portable entertainment devices. The chapter focuses on people’s memories and their dealings with the Walkman, and discusses uses of the Walkman to understand Walkman users in their broader social and cultural contexts. Strict customs controls on the borders between the capitalist Western world and the socialist Eastern world required audiences to smuggle the media technology into Slovenia/Yugoslavia in the 1980s. In the late 1980s, J. E. Beniger discussed the personalization of mass media by disguising the size of mass audiences, targeting messages, and contriving intimacy in content. The Walkman boomed all over the world in the 1980s and represents the beginnings of mobile intimacy.
