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Electronic Continuity: The Sony Dream Machine
September 9, 2008
Much of my professional life has revolved around new and exciting technological resources, at least since 1985 or so. I recently became aware that I do cherish certain constants at the still calm center of the techno-gizmo whirl, however.
I keep a clock radio at bedside and have since I was in graduate school. My first clock radio was a Sony Dream Machine (circa 1977), that was the height of techno-cool at the time I purchased it. Black and streamlined, with AM/FM and a large digital readout. It served me well until a friend of mine decided he wanted to figure out how it worked, took it apart, and actually just discovered how it wouldn’t work, like, after he tried to put it back together. But that’s another story and you know I don’t hold a grudge….
I’ve had a slew of clock radios since then, the latest being a colorful RCA model with a vertical CD player that opens with a slow motion slide for CD loading. Or at least, that’s how it’s supposed to work; after a relatively short time, the CD slide loader start to click loudly and gratingly whenever I tried to load a disc; since this is not conducive to slumber, I retired the clock radio.
Immediate trip to my local Best Buy, looking for clock radios, trying to single out one that I can work when I’m fuzzy with sleep without accidentally setting off a blaring alarm … and then I see it: the latest Sony Dream Machine. It looks different, and yet… it touches off a sense memory in me. It’s black, and looks a bit like a cross between a birthday cake and an ostrich egg, and yet… it’s also streamlined, has a clock with AM/FM radio, and a horizontal loading CD player, and… it has the same little gray wire radio antenna hanging off the back, just like my original Dream Machine.
Minutes later it is mine. I take it home and set it up (child’s play!) and fall asleep that night listening to the dulcet tones of Joe Mantegna reading Robert B. Parker’s Now and Then, secure in the knowledge that the Dream Machine will not fail me. So long as I don’t let my friend Bob anywhere near it. As much as change can be good, continuity can be even better -- at least when it comes to bedside clocks.
More as it happens, in electronic dreamland,
Cheryl
Posted by Cheryl LaGuardia on September 9, 2008 | Comments (2)
