Wired for Sound (and Vision)

As I travel on my regular commute, I get to see some weird and wonderful things. Here are some recent favourites:

• Someone wearing earbuds merrily singing along to the music, oblivious of the other passenger (me) in the carriage.
• A full-on [one-sided] domestic in a carriage full of passengers (please, please don’t hang up your dirty washing in front of the neighbours).
• Parents trying to placate an inconsolable toddler and persuade them that the dummy dropped on the platform can be replaced – aw. (Me? I might have pulled the red cord).

‘Way back when’ – when Status Quo had only just earned the dinosaur badge – we used to travel on buses, trains, etc. listening to our SONY Walkman stereos. Even Sir Cliff had a thing or two to sing about it. But I don’t remember people singing along to the tune they were listening to at the time.

Perhaps we were a more subdued society then (although there might be a few Millwall fans who would argue this concept), or maybe the technology was too new and not as ubiquitous, for us to be complacent with it.

I remember a quite interesting happening from those times. One that I mention regularly in my teaching. That of the ‘format wars’.

Way back further than ‘when’ – before we were able to record programmes on video (BTW there was a nice skit, recently on Peter Kays Cradle to the Grave, about this) two Japanese companies worked on the ‘magic box’ of recording moving images. One was SONY, the other was JVC. Both invented video.

The SONY version was superior quality, dinkier tapes, and more robust machines. The JVC version was cheaper, used larger tapes and was not as robust. SONY’s version was called Betamax and JVC's was called Video Home System (or VHS for short). So, it transpired that VHS found its way into the domestic market, while all the programme makers used SONY’s version for content creation. Hindsight is a wonderful teacher so when a more recent war was set – one between Blu-Ray and HD DVD – the result was that Blu-Ray won, guess who were the inventors of this format? We knew they wouldn't lose twice.

Cliff sang about being wired for sound, and I’m wondering if that’s where all this personal technology gadgetry all started. Many blame SONY. No doubt, they’ll blame Apple (for the invention of the iPhone). But really the ones to blame are us – for allowing a hegemonic influence enter our transit social space. Never on my bike, though. Never.

The war, I’m sure, will continue...