One of the books I finished recently was Exploding the Phone by Phil Lapsley. It’s a book about phone phreaks, a topic I got interested in when I was toodling around a website on defunct computers. I learned some things I didn’t know; like how a large number of phreaks were blind, and how the first switchboard operators were teenage boys. But the thing that surprised me the most was that it’s very likely I’ve never used an analogue phone.
By the time I was old enough to remember talking on the phone, all the systems had been converted to digital. I know I’ve complained before, maybe even ranted, possibly even on this blog about how digital sound differs from voice. Sometimes I worry that society as a whole has forgotten what people actually sound like when they sing. It’s different, right? I’m not the only one who’s noticed this, yes? Listen to someone singing in a cathedral or what the heck, pull out your record player. My point is that the sound, the undigitized sound has a qualitative difference.
I have always had an aversion to talking on the phone, but now I wonder how much of that is me being weird and how much is hearing the digital flattening of the voices. I never realized how much this bothers me until I listened to a recording of a cochlear implant. My reaction was to burst into tears, which really surprised me. It wasn’t a reaction to the thought of using an assistive device or to deafness; it was simply the very mechanical sound that made me experience something like pain. To put a finer point on it: I don’t mind machines sounding like machines, but people should sound human.
At some point in time, technology will advance to the point that we can give people some sort of artificial eye (which sounds like a great idea for a sci-fi story). I can't imagine what early versions of this would be like, because the pixelation would be extreme. I'm not even sure if it would be as cohesive as a TRS-80 screen. But think about it: in real life things flow, sound is liquid, vision blurs. In this new reality, when things fail, they fall into cubes. When things work, they will be sharper, more defined, more vivid than life. Things we could not see or hear before are suddenly in our minds, shaping our dreams and distorting our memories.
I'm not saying we should go backwards, or even that you shouldn't call me on the phone. Just the next time you are walking down the street and you hear someone sing, do me a favor: listen.
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Anywho, I finished the next chapter of Egregious the other day an posted it. Since I'm writing this as a serial, I feel like I have a lot of explaining to do, so the next chapter will be a little bit of back story with a little romance.
In the meantime, here's something to cool you down:
By the time I was old enough to remember talking on the phone, all the systems had been converted to digital. I know I’ve complained before, maybe even ranted, possibly even on this blog about how digital sound differs from voice. Sometimes I worry that society as a whole has forgotten what people actually sound like when they sing. It’s different, right? I’m not the only one who’s noticed this, yes? Listen to someone singing in a cathedral or what the heck, pull out your record player. My point is that the sound, the undigitized sound has a qualitative difference.
I have always had an aversion to talking on the phone, but now I wonder how much of that is me being weird and how much is hearing the digital flattening of the voices. I never realized how much this bothers me until I listened to a recording of a cochlear implant. My reaction was to burst into tears, which really surprised me. It wasn’t a reaction to the thought of using an assistive device or to deafness; it was simply the very mechanical sound that made me experience something like pain. To put a finer point on it: I don’t mind machines sounding like machines, but people should sound human.
At some point in time, technology will advance to the point that we can give people some sort of artificial eye (which sounds like a great idea for a sci-fi story). I can't imagine what early versions of this would be like, because the pixelation would be extreme. I'm not even sure if it would be as cohesive as a TRS-80 screen. But think about it: in real life things flow, sound is liquid, vision blurs. In this new reality, when things fail, they fall into cubes. When things work, they will be sharper, more defined, more vivid than life. Things we could not see or hear before are suddenly in our minds, shaping our dreams and distorting our memories.
I'm not saying we should go backwards, or even that you shouldn't call me on the phone. Just the next time you are walking down the street and you hear someone sing, do me a favor: listen.
*********************
Hmm . . . I think that was somehow different than what I usually write here.
Anywho, I finished the next chapter of Egregious the other day an posted it. Since I'm writing this as a serial, I feel like I have a lot of explaining to do, so the next chapter will be a little bit of back story with a little romance.
In the meantime, here's something to cool you down:
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| I took this picture last week, and now it's 85. |