Historical advancement and effects on arts across time periods

Phonograph

New technologies often have widespread and disruptive effects on society at large, and the humanities in particular, because new technologies force people to expand the realm of possibility beyond what was previously imaginable. Like the printing press before it, the phonograph fundamentally altered the way humans considered sound, music, speech, and recording by making reproducible and tactile something which was previously singular and ephemeral. In order to understand the truly disruptive effects of the phonograph on the humanities, one must examine not only the context of the phonograph's invention, but also the cultural developments which grew out of its invention as well as the subsequent technologies only made possible by the phonograph. Thus, one must necessarily begin an examination of the phonograph with its inventor, Thomas Edison, because by examining Edison's own predictions regarding the future of his invention and comparing them to the actual progress of the phonograph and recorded sound over the subsequent years, one may begin to understand the truly revolutionary nature of the phonograph and the widespread effects it has had on the humanities.

In his 1878 essay "The Phonograph and its Future," Thomas Edison begins by suggesting, "of all the writer's inventions, none has commanded such profound and earnest attention throughout the civilized world as has the phonograph" (Edison, 1878, p. 527). Edison invented the phonograph in July of the previous year, and even by 1878 he had grasped the fundamentally novel nature of the device, believing its popularity was due:

Largely to that peculiarity of the invention which brings its possibilities within range of the speculative imaginations of all thinking people, as well as to the almost universal applicability of the foundation principle, namely, the gathering up and retaining of sounds hitherto fugitive, and their reproduction at will (p. 527).

Earlier devices had succeeded at recording the impression of sounds, but Edison's invention was the first that was able to freely replay them, forever altering human being's relationship with sound itself. Edison goes on to answer some questions about the functioning of the device and possible areas for further development before proposing some of the future uses for the phonograph, not realizing that he is in fact predicting the future of sound recording all the way to the present. Two of the more important predictions he makes regarding the new possibilities created by the phonograph have to do with commerce and, for lack of a better word, surveillance.

Firstly, Edison notes that the phonograph will make possible "the transmission of such captive sounds through the ordinary channels of commercial intercourse and trade in material form, for purposes of communication or as merchantable goods" (Edison, 1878, p. 530). Thus, the most obvious effect the phonograph had on the humanities was to give musicians and vocalists the same ability to record and transmit their work that had long been enjoyed by writers and visual artists. In turn this transformed the way people considered music and sound, giving rise to the behemoth recording industry that exists today.

Like most new media, of course, music recorded on the phonograph really took root with a decidedly pedestrian use; "the expensive devices were leased and later sold as dictating machines, without much success [….] but one California entrepreneur cleverly adapted his phonographs into nickel-in-the-slot machines, which both gradually proved the success of recordings as amusements and gradually created a demand for prerecorded musical records" (Gitelman, 2004, p. 61). As with most cultural production in the twenty-first century, this concept has been adapted and reenacted such that one of the notable elements of Jack White's (of the band The White Stripes) record store Third Man Records is the presence of a coin operated machine called "The Third Man Monkey Band" which plays new songs when a patron inserts a quarter (Mellin, 2011).

The second crucial prediction Edison makes is his belief that the phonograph would allow "the captivation of sounds, with or without the knowledge or consent of the source of their origin" (Edison, 1878, p. 530). Though this prediction is ostensibly more relevant to surveillance, law enforcement, and warfare than the humanities, the connection between disruptive technologies, warfare, and the humanities is inextricable. Indeed, one need only look so far as Google's cultural database to find that the frequency of "phonograph" in fiction peaked dramatically during World War II, as the recording and transmission of sounds took on a new, deadly importance (Michel et al., 2010, figure 1).

Figure 1

Edison concludes his essay by considering a number of possible applications for the phonograph, from replacing nearly every kind of clerical work, to audio books read by "the charitably-inclined professional reader, or by such readers especially employed for that purpose," to toys, and even clocks that might "tell you the hour of the day; call you to lunch; send your lover home at ten, etc." (p. 533-534). With each possible use for the phonograph comes an entirely new industry and profession, from the professional reader to the newly empowered musician. Finally, Edison notes that "in quite another direction, the phonograph will perfect the telephone, and revolutionize present systems of telegraphy," a notable accomplishment considering that "Edison's phonograph was a by-product of the attempt to optimize telephony and telegraphy by saving expensive copper cables" (Edison, 1878, p. 534-535, Kittler, 1999, p. 27). In turn, this improvement of telephony and telegraphy again changed humanity's conception of sound, this time by collapsing space such that any sound, anywhere, might be replayed anywhere else and thus remove the last vestiges of difference between peoples (of course, this has yet to happen, but one may view the phonograph as a step along the way, the most recent iteration of which has been the democratizing power of the internet).