Technology as Language: the Kindle & Edison's Phonograph

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 894

My wise friend Jeff Donlan wrote me the other day about being momentarily stopped in his tracks on hearing a friend saying that they were reading their (news)paper on a kindle. Being a bookman and a librarian, his mind’s eyebrows were raised at the irony of the digital “paper”, and then pressed on.  Kindle may well be on its way to transforming our concept of the “paper” part of “newspaper” and paper –printed books in general, and again may be the biggest leap in the transformation of the distribution of knowledge since the beginnings of the mass popularization of the internet. I wonder if kindle-esque innovations will put and keep the word “paper” in quotation marks (or in a Maris-like asterisk*) and place paper-based info distribution into the antiquarian’s domain. Seems that this is the natural order, a steady progression, to make communication among our kind simpler—and if not more simple, then providing more data with greater ease than previously imagined.  And I’m not talking here about discussing some sort of massive abecedary, working from Ugaritic proto-Canannite pre-Phoenician pre-Greek- alphabet and so on; just an outline of the major deals:  moving from spoken word like Thucydides oceanic memorization and recitation of the Greek cultural cornerstones of the Iliad and Odyssey) to dramatic traditions to written stories to Medieval copyists to woodblock printing to movable type¹ to, well, what, the internet?  And then to kindle-like machines?  

But before the modern kindle there was perhaps a kindle-like precursor that snakes its way in history to (at least) the very capable hands of Thomas Edison, who in a furious few years in the mid 1870’s² invented the light bulb and the phonograph³ (the later coming as a direct byproduct on work done on the telephone and telegraph).. He celebrates his phonograph in the North American Review (May 1878)⁴ and then lists what he saw as the readymade faits acomplis of the phonograph, the first of which was weirdly/spectacularly worded:   “1. The captivity of all manner of sound-waves heretofore designated as fugitive, and their permanent retention.”  Do you hear a soundtrack with that description?  I did.  He proceeded with less fanfare: “2. Their reproduction with all their original characteristics at will, without the presence or consent of the original source, and after the lapse of any period of time. 3. 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. 4. Indefinite multiplication and preservation of such sounds, without regard to the existence or non-existence of the original source. 5. The captivation of sounds, with or without the knowledge or consent of the source of their origin.”

Edison then goes on to list what he saw as distinct “possibilities” for the use of the phonograph in the not-too-distant future. There are ten major prospects, the “bookish” aspect and the first major assault on the way we read is listed fourth (though he wasn’t necessarily weighting his list in any way).  Some of the others in this list (all of which cam to fruition) include: 1.Dictation and letter writing—using the phonograph to record letters and correspondence, which was baldly aimed at the business and corporate trade as the machine was relatively difficult to operate and expensive. 2  Phonographic “books”. I noticed that that Edison did not change the word “book” in any way, even though the book is no longer there with the application of the phonograph, just the read and spoken words.  “Books may be read by the charitably-inclined professional reader, or by such readers especially employed for that purpose, and the record of such book used in the asylums of the blind, hospitals, the sick-chamber, or even with great profit and amusement by the lady or gentleman whose eyes and hands may be otherwise employed; or, again, because of the greater enjoyment to be had from a book when read by an elocutionist than when read by the average reader.” 3. Family records. “For the purpose of preserving the sayings, the voices, and the last words of the dying member of the family [emphasis mine] as of great men the phonograph will unquestionably outrank the photograph.”4. Toys:  “A doll which may speak, sing, cry, or laugh, may be safely promised our children for the Christmas holidays ensuing. Every species of animal or mechanical toy such as locomotives, etc. may be supplied with their natural and characteristic sounds.”

Edison continued, writing on the phonograph’s application for the study of elocution, speaking clocks, language preservation (as in documentation of the proper way of speaking a certain language, something that would’ve come in handy in the spike of disappearing languages at the end of the 19^th century), telephone recorders and pedagogical lessons.

But this is all a little far afield from the kindle aspect. Is the development of things like the kindle another step in the metaphorical development of a technological alphabet?  Like developing an alphabet for a language, where there are a finite numbers of symbols that elegantly possess the capacity to transmit all of the words of a spoken language, is there a corollary for something that makes systemic sense for the technological transmission of knowledge? I guess the question would be whether the development of the kindle (and so on) provides another step towards the completeness of what now stands as a chaotic environment of information and knowledge distribution?=I don’t think that there is yet a driving, poetic sense to these new technologies. The new media provide the means to information but not necessarily the way to it.  They also don’t lend themselves to memorization, which in the old semi-mnemonic days was a way to not only record info but also to help understand it by enforcing prolonged exposure and thought.  With as much data that is daily available, perhaps new information is simply filling memory holes on the vast hole-ridden plane that is the fabric of the new way of gathering information.  I have little doubt that in the next revolutionary step in this whole process will be more knowledge-based than suffering under the weight of primitive search-engine-based data retrieval of today.  I’d say that once the alphabet of technology is more complete, and that the issues of search, organization, storage and retrieval makes more sense, that it may well then leave paper behind.  And perhaps after the power and elegance of having a knowledge system like this that the next giant step would be not having the devices simply with us, but in us.

Notes

1. It is interesting to note that among the first items printed on movable type presses were  packs of tarot cards and religious indulgences (get-out-of-hell cards).

2. For an annotated chronology of some of Edison’s career see HERE.

3.Edison presented his invention at the offices of the Scientific American in New York City, the magazine reporting the event in its  22 December 1877 issue: "Mr. Thomas A. Edison recently came into this office, placed a little machine on our desk, turned a crank, and the machine inquired as to our health, asked how we liked the phonograph, informed us that it was very well, and bid us a cordial good night." Edison applied for his patent for the highly original invention on 24 December, receiving it on 19 February 1878 (patent # 200,521). He would soon lose interest in this invention and move onto other big things (inventing, for example, the biopolar dynamo in the next year); it would be Emile Berliner (1851-1929, and who invented the microphone in this same year) to improve the phonograph and make it more affordable and accessible and increase its utility immeasurably. 1877 also saw the publication of Rayleigh’s superb Theory of Sound and Boltzmann’s revision of the second law.

4. Source here.

Of further interest:

For general browsing in 19^th century journals see the invaluable Library of Congress contribution

Rutgers houses the Edison papers here.

"Clocks Which Will Talk: The Wonderful Possibilities of Edison's Invention." New York Sun (April 28, 1878). TAEM 25: 173-174.

"The Phonograph and Its Future." Scientific American Supplement 124 (May 18, 1878): 1973. TAEM 25: 269.

"The Phonograph and Its Future." North American Review 126 (May-June 1878): 527-536. Reprinted widely. TAEM 25: 198-199.

"To the Editor." New York Tribune (June 8, 1878): 5.

"The Phonograph and Its Future." Telegraphic Journal 6 (June 15, 1878): 250. TAEM 25: 265.

"To the Editor." New York Tribune (June 27, 1878): 5. Reprinted in Engineering [see below]. Not selected.

 

Comments

[Giovanni]

"I don’t think that there is yet a driving, poetic sense to these new technologies."

This is quite brilliantly put. I do wonder however if wireless, global distribution will provide that. I think there is something more to the iPod than it's iconic fashion-status: the personal media player has changed the nature of our relationship with music quite profoundly; the Kindle, I'd argue more so than the personal computer, might be poised to achieve something similar. A tablet that can be endlessly reinscribed with all the content you own or are able to access, wherever you might be, might just become as natural, as it were, as the idea of a print library, perhaps more so. The reconfiguration of the kind of space where reading takes place and a library exists will likewise be significant, and constitute a move towards the intimate and the individual, away from the communal and collective. And isn’t that how genres like the novel and contemporary poetry already operate, isn’t it the kind of space they presuppose? So in a sense the Kindle could become the technology that our dominant poetics have been imagining for a number of centuries now, and offer a quite natural transition into a technology that is in fact more easily interiorised, able to seem more transparent (and at the same time conceal its ideology better).

I’ll stop there before I get even ramblier. Thank you for another great post. The first Edison quote is a killer.