Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The Audible Past explores the cultural origins of sound reproduction. It describes a distinctive sound culture that gave birth to the sound recording and the transmission devices so ubiquitous in modern life. With an ear for the unexpected, scholar and musician Jonathan Sterne uses the technological and cultural precursors of telephony, phonography, and radio as an entry point into a history of sound in its own right. Sterne studies the constantly shifting boundary between phenomena organized as "sound" and "not sound." In The Audible Past, this history crisscrosses the liminal regions between bodies and machines, originals and copies, nature and culture, and life and death.

Blending cultural studies and the history of communication technology, Sterne follows modern sound technologies back through a historical labyrinth. Along the way, he encounters capitalists and inventors, musicians and philosophers, embalmers and grave robbers, doctors and patients, deaf children and their teachers, professionals and hobbyists, folklorists and tribal singers. The Audible Past tracks the connections between the history of sound and the defining features of modernity: from developments in medicine, physics, and philosophy to the tumultuous shifts of industrial capitalism, colonialism, urbanization, modern technology, and the rise of a new middle class.

A provocative history of sound, The Audible Past challenges theoretical commonplaces such as the philosophical privilege of the speaking subject, the visual bias in theories of modernity, and static descriptions of nature. It will interest those in cultural studies, media and communication studies, the new musicology, and the history of technology.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of Figures
• List of Abbreviations for Archival and Other Historical Materials Cited
• Acknowledgments
• Hello!
• 1 Machines to Hear for Them
• 2 Techniques of Listening
• 3 Audible Technique and Media
• 4 Plastic Aurality: Technologies into Media
• 5 The Social Genesis of Sound Fidelity
• 6 A Resonant Tomb
• Conclusion: Audible Futures
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This comprehensive study of the history of modern sound reproduction in the context of the social and cultural conditions that influenced its development is, according to the author, not simply a set of historical facts, but "deliberately speculative." Sterne (communication and cultural studies, Univ. of Pittsburgh) explains the emergence of technology in the light of human habits and understanding. The book, therefore, has interdisciplinary interest, especially for musicians, sociologists, historians, acousticians, and anthropologists. The author carefully presents his thoughtful perspectives against a background of key events, persons, and occasions. Topics discussed include aesthetics, music, speech, Native Americans and sound recording, preservation of culture, and early sound reproduction technology such as radio, telephone, and gramophone. Readers will find information on Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Hermann Helmholtz, Samuel Morse, and others. The book is aptly illustrated. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. For all libraries with an interest in this subject. J. R. Heintze American University