Version History: Sony Watchman

26:08Exactly. Why did we... Can we go back? We strayed from the light. We went too close to the sun. It's true. So this thing launches, like I said, in Japan first. Super popular. Takes off. It was so popular in Japan, in fact, that they couldn't make enough of them to have it be readily available in the U.S. so it becomes a big deal in the U.S. and people start to like freak out because they can't get one like there are stories about people going to Bloomingdale's to try to buy one and then they couldn't get one so they like ran down to the Sony headquarters to yell at Sony employees about the fact that they couldn't get a watchman I mean wild but the thing that I found so interesting about this is overwhelmingly people who used it and reviewed it like loved it but also thought it was bad and it's like it's the same thing we were talking about with the older ones right like and it's you can sort of see it looking at it like yeah the screen sucks and it's huge and it's heavy but it's awesome yeah i love it i i'm just thinking of like the complaints i have with heavy phones like a galaxy ultra you know like i feel justified being like this is this is heavy and chunky, you know, like imagining making that complaint when around something like this.

27:33It's just totally ridiculous. I just imagine having like, if you're serious about watching your TV on the go, just like the 40 AA batteries you must have in your bag along with it, just weighing things down. Oh my God, like the Game Boy days. Like that was the scourge of the Game Boy experience and like plugging it in whenever I could. Like, we got to my grandparents' house, and I was like, I've got to plug in my Game Boy because it's a diet. I don't want to eat through the batteries. So, I just want to show you, as this thing is launching in the U.S., Sony made some truly spectacular slash alarming commercials about this thing.

28:11Oh, I love an alarming commercial. So, here is an ad with a very famous person who was not yet famous at the time of making this ad. See if you can figure out who it is. you're about to see the me tv the sony watchman it's the she tv the luigi tv the first truly personal so this is the whole pitch right people have it in their book they're reading it under the covers flat screen television just over an inch thick or is it thin and one even has an am fm radio the referee tv the sony watchman tv the one and only tv for the one and only you Did you catch the celebrity? I did not. It was a little grainy.

28:53That is none other than Jason Alexander, our good friend George Costanza. He has hair. Oh, my gosh. That's why I didn't get it. Yeah. He has hair. Yeah, this is pre-fame and hair loss. But the thing I love about this ad, it is so, it's like a very 2025 ad. It's like, just take that thing out of being a watchman and put smartphones in their hands, and it's the same damn thing. It's just like, oh, don't go to bed. Don't like hang out with your family. Don't referee the game you're being paid to referee. Look at this instead. If you just replace the watchman with AI and that's like 2025. Oh, no. This is like a Gemini ad or something.

29:35Before we move on too far, I just want to, we're all product reviewers. We've all written product reviews. I would like to read you a few lines from the greatest product review I've ever read in my entire life, which is by Tom Shales in a newspaper called The Record Journal from December 2nd of 1982. It says, Watchman, show us the night and the day and the NFL and the new$25 ,000 pyramid. Actually, the$25 ,000 pyramid looks like a 25 cent pyramid on the new Sony Watchman, but who cares? That's very good. That's a good line. Oh my gosh. Genuine, genuine kudos to them for that. The Watchman is as cute as E.T.

30:09and you don't have to wait in the woodshed for one to come and visit you. I don't know what that means. Wow. I don't think that's anything. That's so intense. On a TV this small, any series is a mini series. That was my favorite line. I thought that was pretty good. I liked that a lot. That's very good. Yeah, that was well played by him. The set runs for two and a half hours on four little batteries, or it can be operated from a wall plug or larger batteries for longer playing time. And I'm like, Tom, what am I supposed to make of this? Do more batteries, bigger batteries. Who cares? Have some batteries.

30:37What do you want? Oh, no. You had an editor there. Yeah. Tom Shales. he said the whole screen could be hidden by a single commemorative postage stamp which I suppose How big were postage stamps back then? This is what I've been wondering. That's a little harsh. Yeah. But even our buddy Tom Shales the greatest product reviewer of all time he said at the end of this he said the same thing everybody says which is this thing is awesome I love it to pieces it's not the thing. And he along with everybody else was already talking about oh LCD is going to make this stuff work because lcd it was like it was a science project it was really complicated it was really expensive but it made the whole display stack like so so so much smaller and it was very clear to everybody that like this thing is a good idea but it won't have to be this big for very long and so this is just this is such an interesting example of the kind of gadget that is like doomed from the day it starts yeah but that kind of doesn't kill its appeal at all.

31:39Like, Sony did everything right, and this thing always had, like, a teeny tiny shelf life. Yeah, there's sort of a unique moment in time. There's not like a thing that could come before it, really, and there's not a direct thing to replace it. It feels like just so of its moment. Totally. I love it. Totally. Alright, so we need to take a break, and then we're gonna talk a little bit about the legacy of The Watchman and how it changed us all forever. We'll be right back.

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33:12All right, we're back. So a thing that I discovered about The Watchman is that it became like a weirdly great giveaway. This is like, so I was just searching around thinking, seeing like, okay, where was this thing sort of coming up in pop culture? And over and over it was like, oh, I got one from the company raffle. Or like if you sign up for, there was one that was like sign up for a mortgage on this Florida beach house and you'll get a free watchman from the real estate company. And I think to me it like really speaks to what this thing actually was, which is like no one needed this, but it's awesome.

33:51And if you have one, kick ass. and like let me just play you a few of the things that this became thrown into because they're very funny a free sony watchman tv with every new superior ford car truck or van but you've got to buy now because this offer is good only during the sale of bration and only as superior ford in zachary welcome to the general mills watch and play game in the next 60 seconds we'll tell you if you've won the sony watchman tv you can win it right here right now got your watch and play game card? You can find watch and play game cards inside these big E-Series or get them free by writing to Watchman TV giveaway box 9602 Clinton, Iowa.

34:32We'll include a list of winning pictures. Millions will enter or a thousand can win. I honestly think submitting things to P.O. Boxes to try and win contests is the single most nostalgic thing I can think of. Oh my gosh. Millions will enter. Thousands will win. That's their government mandated disclaimer. I won a Sprite logo basketball. Yeah. What did you... You actually won? From like the bottle top of a Sprite bottle. Did you have to mail it in? I did. That's awesome. And I got a basketball. See, that was the first step. Yeah. Actually mailing it in. I never got that far. You didn't get your basketball?

35:10No. They were counting on you not doing that. I was so excited that I won. Allison was vigilant. I mean, maybe I would have done it for a Sony Watchmen. Yeah. I mean, like, that's like a perfect giveaway thing because it's not going to cost too much to have for like a corporation, but it's just expensive enough for like a normal person that you're like, I'd love it as a gift. I don't want to pay my own money for it. Yeah. Like it's perfect. You're already buying a car. Why not get a watchman with it? Yeah, or buying a house. That's a safety hazard. You're buying, because like ostensibly, like the referee, not paying attention to the game, you're going to be driving and not paying attention to the rules of the road in your Bronco.

35:50So just watching your tiny little screen. I mean, yes, but no. I'm good with it, personally. I mean, and the thing I have enjoyed the most about this was going back and seeing all of the stories about how people were using theirs. Like over and over and over, there are like people who are complaining or writing about or, you know, submitting questions to newspapers being like, my husband won't stop watching the football game on his watchman in church and he's just like bent over in the pew with presumably headphones on and 17 inch antenna just watching tv and this is the sort of thing that again like it's it's kind of commonplace now like everybody's on their phone everywhere all the time but this thing is enormous and and and new and so it was like it was you were not inconspicuous when you were doing something like this.

36:46And people just didn't care. They just did it anyway. So our news writer, Andrew Leszewski, told me he had one, he had a Sony Watchman and he was addicted to it and he whipped it out at a funeral. Wow. As a kid. So I'm shaming Andrew. But like, that's, that's amazing. Just whipping out the Sony Watchman at a funeral in the 80s or like whenever he had his. That's, that's pretty amazing. He also said that he would use like the sound only function so that when he was at a baseball game, he could actually hear the commentary. So like that. Another classic dad move. That's a classic, classic sport ball dad move.

37:27Was he keeping score too with all the little. I don't know. I don't care about sports enough to dive deeper into that. But I was like, oh, yeah. Yeah. I guess you can't listen to the pundits say the thing about the ball sport. Yep. Yeah. That's what it's called. Yeah, the ball sport. Yeah, people say that. But no, and I think what's wild about that to me is like everybody just started doing it. Do you know what I mean? It's not like there wasn't like a slow period of figuring out where these things are and are not socially acceptable. People were just like, oh, I have a TV. Sick. I'm going to watch this TV.

38:00And they're like, where are you? And they're like, I don't know. It doesn't matter. I'm going to watch this TV. And it just like happened. and uh one of the things i thought was really interesting about all of this is there had been from the beginning of the walkman there were a lot of people who were like really up in arms about the existence of this thing they're like it's isolating people they're wearing headphones they're not interacting in the real world how am i supposed to know who's here you know stuff that we're very familiar with now but it was this they're all these questions about like sort of individualism versus isolation is this big messy spectrum uh and the watchman just took that to a whole other level because at least with the Walkman you like dancing down the street in flowy clothing but you at least like have your head up probably the Watchman is just like you just immediately are subsumed into your own world yeah like we see in these ads the whole point is to take you completely away from whatever you're doing and just immerse you in this space and it's like it's just very funny to think 43 years later we have not solved any of that there I feel like there's kind of a moment with new technologies like that especially like the mobile technologies and of varying degrees of like is this okay everybody's watching their sony watchman at funerals or whatever it is a choice to sit in a public place and just be like let me just put this 17 inch we can't emphasize enough it's 17 inches yeah that's that's it's a whole ruler and then just and it's so small my eyes are so bad if i was watching this i'd have to be like two inches in front of me just to see what it's on there can you imagine trying to watch a telenovela or anything with like a subtitle no it's not happening there's no no i still love it again like so much of this i think was just that it was novel and it was like it was just so cool that you could do it like i don't know do you guys ever go back and watch like tv from this era and you're like oh this all looks like crap how did anyone see anything on television uh imagine that but at two inches yeah right might have made things better like fuzz it a little bit it's kind of true um so but anyway so this thing like both sort of sets off this like weird cultural firestorm that we're still dealing with now um but also continues to become a huge hit uh one of the things i was reading suggested that uh so sony after the walkman uh had become really popular, might have been one of the reasons that it bought CBS Records for$2 billion, in part to just like have stuff to put on the Walkman.

40:30Or Sony. And there's also a real argument to be made that Sony bought Columbia Pictures just to have stuff to put on the Watchman. That there was like, honest to God, like there was a future in which this thing was like the iPod. Oh, wow. Sony Watchman 50 is like the video iPod, was like sort of how they were thinking about this, which I think is super fascinating. That's so Sony. And then the one after this, the FD20, because what would come after the FD210 but the FD20? Thank you, Sony. Added video input to this. So you could just use it as a screen, but put something else into it. And so this thing is just like starts to become more and more successful over time.

41:13A few models later, it got color. a few models after that I think was when it got a whole new design and it kind of looked like a radar gun that I was not into it but then eventually it becomes full on LCD much smaller much simpler like the thing you would sort of expect it to be but then everything conspires to kill the watchman sort of two things happen simultaneously One is that a bunch of other devices start to exist. So by now it's like the late 90s. And basically Sony spends like 15 years. I think they made 65 different Watchmen. Holy. That's a lot of Watchmen. It's a lot of Watchmen. There was an army of Watchmen.

42:04Watchmans. The Watchmans. No, no, no. It's Watchmen. The Watches' man. And so they eventually, like, it becomes, for a bunch of reasons, sort of price and availability on this stuff, it becomes like not quite Walkman level mainstream, but like lots of people have them. But then again, immediately LCD makes that turn and Sony is actually late to the turn to LCD because it had the CRT thing that it was really excited about. So it was slow to make that change. Others came along. But then again, by the end of the by like the late 90s, we're starting to get to like portable DVD players and we're starting to get to all kinds of other ways to consume stuff in a mobile way.

42:43But then the thing that truly killed it was that in the U.S. in particular, we switched from analog TV signals to digital TV signals, which literally all at once destroyed the Watchman. It just had nothing to watch anymore, which is very sad. That's true. That process took a long time, and it was super messy, and there are a lot of people who still have a lot of feelings about it. I mean, if you turn it on now, it just plays static. And that just feels so emblematic and sad at the same time. Just like, it still works. It would still work. I know. So it does. And so what's wild is that that was the end.

43:18Like, very rarely do you get a moment where something just instantly ceases to be a thing that anyone needs or cares about. But it's like as soon as they switch the signals, it's dead. It was gone. It's like you can boot up an old family computer or something and there's still remnants of like whatever was on there and some software that is, you know, outdated and a security risk. But like, yeah, it's just blank. Like the content stream does not exist in any way anymore. Yeah. All right. We need to take a break and then we're going to come back and we're going to do the eight version history questions.

43:53We'll be right back.

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44:48so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. All right, we're back. So on every episode, we answer the same eight questions about whatever product we're talking about. Question number one, what was the very best thing? about the Watchman? Clearly the 17-inch antenna. Yeah. Clearly that. No, I think that's so hard. Like, the thing about these version history questions is I couldn't list, like, a whole thing about what the worst thing is.

45:35But trying to figure and, like, distill the best thing. So what I had as my best thing is now, after our conversation, what I think might be the worst thing is that it made TV portable. you know like it's like i don't know what it is about making your music private and portable that just feels immensely positive that you would think would apply to the tv portion of it and it's like yeah cool awesome uh very handy uh for dads at baseball games but um now i'm just like is that the best thing is that the best thing i think maybe now my revised best thing is just how much of like a tactile gadget it is yeah that's kind of mine too yeah the dials like it just really brings me back and you see the like little indicator move up and down the window when you're tuning it yeah everything just just takes me back to using a gadget of this era and it's all like within reach of your thumb kind of like you're watching you're walking yeah you could it's like Like, yeah, I mean, there you go.

46:46I actually didn't expect that to work, but you can hold it in your right hand and turn all the wheels. I'm going to have wrist pain. It is one pound. It is well considered, I think. I think my answer is just the all-in-oneness of it, I think, is really awesome. Like, if you look at something like this now, I see at least two things on here that would be separate accessories. Right? There's the kickstand, which definitely would not come as part of it. The antenna would probably be something separate. It would have, you know, it would not be AA batteries, which I love AA batteries. But there's just something about, like, you could take this thing out of the box, put in the batteries, and turn it on, and it would be instantly feature complete.

47:29I think it's, like, very cool. Oh, man. We just got a PS5 because we're on the cutting edge of technology. But like the hoops you have to jump through to start up a new console was a whole evening. You're like set aside a whole evening before you plan on playing any of your games. Yeah. This is just like it's ready to go. Yeah, totally. All right. Question number two. What was the worst thing about it? Clearly the 17 inch antenna. You know, I think the fact that it would probably just not be very practical. it's eating through the battery life like on the one hand double a batteries on the other hand double a batteries yeah and then also i think a thing that doesn't get talked about is just how finicky tuning can be because like it's so satisfying now but if we were trying to like like do you remember trying to tune into the right station on like your radios especially this is on the go this is like a thing you are like actively out in the world moving around with That's the whole point of its existence.

48:33Trying to dial that in all the time, I think, would probably drive me insane. There's a—I listen to the radio in my car a lot, and there's kind of a dead zone on my route to pick up my kid at daycare. And it's at a stoplight, and I'm always listening to, like, KEXP, and I'll, like, inch the car forward to try and get in the right spot where I'm picking—where there's not static anymore. Yeah, with that plus a visual would be very frustrating. Yeah, agreed. I think for me, it's got to be the screen. Like, legit kudos for your technological accomplishments, Sony, but the screen sucked. Yeah. And it is kind of, it's like a little bit of a you had one job situation.

49:19You know what I mean? Like, it's like, oh, we made a Walkman. It's so neat, but the sound is awful. It's like, well, is it that good a Walkman? Yeah, I just I'm so like so universally the reviews were like, I love this thing so much. It's so terrible. And that's genuinely how I feel about it. Yeah. Question number three. Would it have been a bigger hit if Apple made it? Nah. At least not at the time, I think. Like, are we talking 1980s Apple? Yes. 1982 Apple is like Apple II era Apple. And I don't think it had the chops to do this. Like Apple wasn't even thinking mobile back then. And then if you think about just how many competitors there were in this space, because you're like, what, mentioning Casio is in the game.

50:03Panasonic, I think, is in the game. Sinclair is in the game. And then if you really think about it, Sony in the 80s, peak bubble era Japan, Sony was like, this is the height of my power. I have not yet Sony'd myself into oblivion. This is a good point. Like, we probably should have made more of this at the beginning. Like, Sony truly is, like, crushing it in the early 80s. Like everything it's doing is working. It is like at the center of culture. I think especially in Japan, obviously, it is like the biggest thing going. But even as it comes stateside, like Sony, people saw Sony then the way people see Apple now.

50:39So like if you were to ask this question in the 80s, it would be like, is it a bigger hit if Sony made it? Like that's how meaningful a thing Sony was then. All right. Question number four. If you could go back and make this thing yourself, what would you do differently? you're you're in charge of the watchman division in 1982 are you changing the name back to flat tv is that the move i feel like that the environmentally sound thing would be to make it like encourage you to run it off of the off of wall power and not on eat a bunch of double a batteries like i don't know split the difference swappable battery packs yeah yeah so then like Like when you're at home, you charge the battery packs.

51:24And then you just have the swappable battery packs. I think I would just try to make it cheaper. Like even like a little bit cheaper. And I think you can kind of corner the market in a pretty big way. Because if you think about it, like the Walkman lasted so long. Yeah. And I think the Watchman was on this sort of death march towards LCDs from the very beginning. But I think if you like really invest and you're like, we're going to make it as culturally big and cool and exciting so that like a generation of people who never used one has like attachments to it, I think you could have done it. And I think you just try to drive the price down a little.

52:04If I'm Sony, I go into crime and I make sure that everyone stays on analog. And then I make a digital tuning adapter. There you go. There you go. Okay. So we're going to corrupt governments around the world. Corrupt government. For my own ends. Yeah. I mean, they bought Columbia Pictures probably for The Watchmen, right? So why? See, they went too big. They were like, we're going to get into the money guzzler that is Hollywood. We should have just made it so that everyone stayed on analog forever. Yeah. I don't know why they got that accent all of a sudden. But yeah. Yeah, they're doing a very like mid-Atlantic accent on that one.

52:44I like it. All right. Question number five. What feature of this thing should every current version have? And I'm going to tweak this slightly because there are no current Watchmen. You have to take something from this device in front of us and put it on smartphones. Kickstand. That's what I was going to say too. Yes. That's why I said it fast. I wanted to get it in there. As a person who will never stop having a pop socket on the back of my phone. I look at that kickstand and I'm like, Sony gets it. You guys are doing it right. So kickstand is the appropriate answer. The one in my heart is the 17-inch antenna.

53:17Oh, my gosh. I love it. Just as like a carrying mechanism. Just as a carrying mechanism. Just sort of dangle it at your side. You know, you put the 17-inch antenna, fight off people on the street who are bothering you, poke out your eye, instant get out of work free card. Oh, sorry, guys. poked my nose out. No. Taser situation? Taser situation. Like when I have to point to my husband at the thing he didn't actually put away, just tap it with the antenna, go tap, tap, tap, tap. See, you've just suggested the possibility of a whole new app store just for the antenna on your iPhone. There we go. And I'm now very intrigued by this idea.

53:50This is a free idea. I will consult someone in the third-party accessories market. V gets 30%. You heard it here first. Yeah, 30%. I'll live with 30%. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I do love an antenna. I just like, phones need more things to fiddle with. I don't think it needs an antenna. But like my other option, if it wasn't the kickstand, was going to be the tuners. Just because I'm like, there's just something about like, stop it with the volume buttons that suck to press and give me a thing I can spin with my finger. Just give it to me. As I asked Joni, I've said the digital ground is the input of the...

54:27Honestly, if Joni and I had gotten up at the intro of the Apple Watch and been like, this does nothing, but it's fun as hell to fiddle with. I would have been like, yes, Johnny. Yeah. You get it, Johnny. To be fair, scroll knobs on mechanical keyboards, digital crown, and bring back scrolly thingies. Yeah. I don't know. More scrolly thingies. More scrolly thingies. I'm into that. Question number six. Is there an alternate timeline in which this thing was more or even more successful? I think the answer to this one is clearly yes. Do you think if there's the cheaper one? I think if Sony waited a few years and did this first, made like a huge splash with the LCD Sony Walkman and tried to be early to that instead of very late to this, I think it could have worked.

55:09Because the thing is, with something like this, you just can't make that bet at the time because you just don't know how long it's going to take to commercialize. You don't know when it's going to happen. Like, I get why you ship this thing when you do. But knowing what we know now, if I'm Sony, I just like ride the Walkman out for a while, add some more features to it. It keeps being a thing and then it's like late 80s Watchmen. What's up, losers? And I feel like it wins. And then it dies immediately when the— I don't know if it dies. I know there's that. But conceptually, they were so spot on because everything that they pitched as an idea we are currently doing now.

55:44Yeah. So I do think— I've been watching sports the whole time we've been doing this. I mean, honestly, my fictional alternate timeline where Sony gets a mid-Atlantic accent and goes, Hey, see, folks here, we're going to get the analog. We're going to own the analog and nothing goes digital ever. Then they win. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. This is the smartphone of that era. I mean, you're honestly kind of right. Yeah. Which brings us to question number seven. Could you reboot it now? Oh, I don't know. I mean, do we have to assume you can do some kind of digital antenna situation with it? I mean. You can reboot it however you want.

56:24Okay. I would like to make the case that not only could you reboot this now, Netflix should be working on this already. I would agree with you on that for sure. Because I think in Korea, they still have phones that do TV like this. Oh, man. I still think that they actually, they definitely do. because when the coup d 'etat was happening back in December, people were taking their old Galaxy phones that could do this. Oh, wow. And they were using it because what happened? YouTube wasn't working. Streaming wasn't working. Cell phones weren't working. So all the TV signals were working. They just needed to update.

57:02Like they have like this different standard there. I think it's called like DBM, DMB or something like that. So, you know, as soon as December 2024, people were actually having a need for this. So also if we're in some sort of apocalyptic zombie Last of Us era, I think this comes back. Sure. I think this comes back. I think a lot of things come back in that era. But I think, so to me, the idea of a dedicated shows and movie device is actually very compelling. Like I have found myself over and over recently, like sitting down to watch a show that I want to watch. and I'm like, I'm so excited to watch this.

57:42I've been waiting all week to watch it and then I just screw around on my phone the whole time. And I'm like, this is dumb. Like, why am I doing this? And then now when I open up my phone, there is the simplest place to go is like social media or Reddit or something like that. And so for me, it's like the idea of actually having something that is just like essentially an iPod video again actually makes a lot of sense to me. Like a Kindle, but for TV. Yeah, but I want it to come from a streaming service. And it probably has to be Netflix because I just want the whole damn library just either locally on the device or just always there available for me.

58:18And it's just like maybe it's the answer to this is probably ends up being like the foldable iPhone that turns into like a larger phone or any foldable gadget now. But, like, there is something to a dedicated portable television that I, like, honestly think I want back in my life. Yeah. I want it. I don't want notifications while I'm watching TV. No, I know. I don't. But I want to go even farther down that road, and I want it to play only PBS. And not just PBS. I want the, like, cozy PBS shows, like America's Test Kitchen, Bob Ross, the, like, sewing shows or whatever, Rick Steves. I think that would, I would carry that around.

59:00Okay, wait, we figured this out. Yeah. So you buy it. And when you buy it, you pick like a handful of what amount to like fast channels. Yeah. So it's just like always on playing whatever you want. So for me, it's like one of mine is going to be like a 24-7 stream of The Office. Yeah. That's just like on the tuner. I can just tune to The Office. And you pick like, I don't know, there are like 12 stations on here. So you pick 12 channels and that's what you have. And this just is like your never-ending TV machine. Yeah. And you can never change it. Right. No, but that's great also because, you know, it's the problem with TikTok is that you constantly have to scroll.

59:38You have to interact with it. If it's just like a thing where you're tuning in and you don't have to do that. Oh, that's great. And this solves the you turn it on and it immediately starts playing problem. Right. Which I like very much. All right. We solved it. We did it. Okay. And we're going to call it the flat TV. It's going to be sick. FD-210. We're going to call it the FD-110 because Sony skipped right past that for some reason. Well, undercut them. Yeah. All right, question number eight. Does this belong in the Virgin History Hall of Fame? I think yes. It's a perfect gadget. It doesn't matter that it's big and bulky and it chewed through AA batteries and it doesn't work anymore.

1:00:18It's perfect. I also think yes, just because conceptually, like, just this whole time we've been talking about how everything it does was like a precursor to our current hell state and reality. So like if you're talking about like version history, we have a lot of RIP gadgets that never made it. But like if you're talking about impact and thoughts and like concepts, I actually think this is pretty like holy guacamole. This is just my phone, but like make it retro and analog and steampunk. This is a steampunk smartphone. Honest to God. Okay, let me make the case of Gets which is that I think what you both said is true but I don't think this device did it.

1:01:00Do you know what I mean? Like I think it was right about a lot of things but I don't think it caused those things if that makes sense. Like I actually don't think you can draw you can draw a sort of straight cultural line from there to here but I don't think this sort of begets the smartphone in any sort of straight way. I will allow it if you at a future date and time and put the Walkman in, because I think the Walkman may be the actual, like, precursor. Oh, that's an interesting point. Or we go all the way back and it's the Pressman. And or we go back to the Pressman. Sony's tape recorder division gets the one it deserves.

1:01:37Like, if we think about, like, what Sony did with the Pressman and then the Walkman and then the Watchman, like, that, like, line of thinking and just, like, the cultural impact of having personal devices where we isolate ourselves into a constant content streaming hell and don't remember to look up and talk to other people. Then, yeah, this is definitely, like, an evolution in there. But if you're talking about, like, the iconic thing in that timeline, then I think it would be the Walkman. That's fair. So. I tend to agree. I will say the Watchman did end up on Time's list of the all-time 100 gadgets.

1:02:12Yeah? Which I thought was kind of wild. What year? This was in 2010. Okay. Okay. And, I mean, again, with a black and white screen smaller than most current cell phone displays, The Watchman isn't much by today's standards, but when it was released in 1982, it was a marvel. Again, I love it and it sucks. Like, over and over and over and over. That's just what they say. I think it's no. I think you're right that if you're going to point to a thing that changed everything, it has to be the Walkman. Yeah. Because this comes only because of the Walkman. That and, like, the one thing I'll put in its favor is that it's kind of popularizing.

1:02:51It may not be the number one thing that did it, but it is just like pushing this idea of screens everywhere. Yeah. Because honestly, maybe you stay out of the version Hall of Fame because you created a dystopian hell. Yeah, right. I feel like we're not rewarding that behavior. Screens everywhere. Yeah. Like, I love it. It's the perfect gadget. There's just so much about its boxiness and 80s-ness that like brings so much joy. But then I think about my life right now and how TikTok is my hell and I doom scroll and we have the word doom scroll. No, you don't deserve to be in the version Hall of Fame.

1:03:23You can think about that. That is a lot to put on the Watchmen. The Watchmen is just here doing its best. Okay, I'm sorry. You have a 17-inch antenna. Don't put that on the flat TV. Yeah, flat TV. Okay, okay, you know what? Let's put it on Sony. We'll put it on Sony. You can't choose who your parents are. That's true. Yeah, but for now, I think it stays out. But it's like an honorable mention. Okay, honorable mention. It got votes during the ceremony, but it didn't quite make it in. You know, maybe if there's like a conceptual Hall of Fame or almost, almost famous. The almost Hall of Fame. The almost famous is pretty good.

1:03:56The almost famous. The almost Hall of Fame. I'm just inventing new wings for your Hall of Fame. The Virgin History Hall of Fame is going to be a very complicated compound. It's going to be a huge compound with different wings. This will be in the Southwest Wing, I've decided. Okay. Yeah. There it is. Done and done. All right. That is it for the show. Thank you both for doing this. Thank you, as always, for being here with us. As ever, you can watch all of our episodes on YouTube. You can listen to them wherever you get podcasts. And the best way to support all of us and all of this is to subscribe to Verge.com.

1:04:29Thank you again. See you next time.

1:04:35Version History is produced by Victoria Barrios, River Branson, Owen Grove, Brandon Kiefer, Travis Larchuk, Eric Gomez, Andrew Marino, and Alex Parkin. Studio support from Chris Shurtleff. Our theme music is composed by Brandon McFarland. Be sure to subscribe to the new Version History podcast feed to get all of our new episodes as soon as they arrive.

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