The good old days when portable CD players were used by everyone is something that you will never have to experience thanks to iPods and mp3 players. You probably have no idea what it even looks like so I have included a picture below. I know it must be hard to imagine a time when you had to walk around with a piece of technology that was the size of a disk and that you had to carry the CD’s that you wanted to listen to with you. You had to manually change the disk when you wanted to listen to another album or artist (which mean carrying around your CD’s in a bulky case). I remember sitting on a school bus coming home from middle school listening to the Backstreet Boys (you probably have no idea who this boy band is and that is a good thing) on my portable CD player. It took up an entire pocket in my backpack and I had to be careful with it so I didn’t accidentally drop it and break it. The large fuzzy headphones that you had to wear and the poor sound quality are definitely something that I don’t miss. While the portable CD player was a pain and is no longer of use to you it was a necessary piece of technology that helped get us to where we are now with our thin, modern, music technology.
Before music was available to download online you actually had to go and buy the CD and listen to it in a chunky player that was not portable (you might not even know what CD’s are by the time you read this and I apologize. Look it up on whatever fancy new piece of technology you are reading this on). The portable CD player (a.k.a Discman) came along and made a step in the right direction with the technology that was available at the time. If you had to have the CD in order to listen to your music than it made sense that the portable device would have to be big enough to accommodate CD’s. It must be hard for you to image a time when music was not readily downloadable with the click of a mouse but that is how it used to be. The Discman paved the way for the mp3 player to be created and your colorful iPods and iPhones. Now you do not even need a singular music device because it is just already included on your smart phones.
While the Discman is outdated and I am glad it is gone, it was a necessary step to reach the levels of technology you are experiencing now. History is just a tale of us all taking baby steps towards a better and brighter future that I hope you are enjoying.
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Language, Texts, and Technology 375 
I too remember using my CD player on the way to school (my first CD was Santana, however). I completely agree that MP3 players (and especially smartphones) have really changed how I listen to music. I no longer have to have headphones to be able to hear a song (though it’s obviously preferred), and the ability to store thousands of albums instead of being limited to whatever CDs I had lying around is extremely liberating.
I really enjoyed having all of my CD’s and my yellow CD player but I really don’t miss carting aground all of those CDs and equipment. My family went on a lot of road trips and so it was great for that, If I didn’t want to listen to my dad’s music I could put on my head phones and listen to my own. Not that those old school headphones did a good job of canceling out the noise of my dad’s music but it kept me happy. Now I’m thankful for my Ipod I can use it to fall asleep in the car and my nice Sony headphones cancel out all of the noises around me. It’s amazing the different sound quality that they produce even when they are plugged into the same device, It just goes to show you how much is changed.
I remember listening to Avril Lavigne on my CD player all the time in Elementary school. I would listen to it on my walk to school. When I was home I had my awesome boom box to listen to. I too listened to the Backstreet Boys quite a bit growing up. I had a silver cd player and I put all these stickers on it, Lisa Frank stickers if you remember those. And them my mom have gave me her CD player which was blue and I thought it was the coolest thing. I’m pretty sure I listened to my first Jonas Brothers cd way back in seventh grade right before I got my first iPod. Man iPods are nice!