History
When Sony released the first Walkmans, they featured two headphone jacks and a "talk button." When pressed, this button activated a microphone and lowered the volume to enable those listening to have a conversation without removing their headphones. Sony Chairman Akio Morita added these features to the design for fear the technology would be isolating. Though he "thought it would be considered rude for one person to be listening to his music in isolation" (Morita quoted in Patton), people bought their own units rather than share and these features were removed for later models.
Read more about this topic: Walkman Effect
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