The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another by Ainissa Ramirez

Author:Ainissa Ramirez [Ramirez, Ainissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780262043809
Google: iDoiEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0262043807
Barnesnoble: 0262043807
Goodreads: 51777430
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2020-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

Edison created a new way to represent information in addition to written language. Words on a page had two lives—a spoken existence and a written one. But sound only had one life to live. Sound was confined to a short time span and a habitat confined between one person’s lips and another’s ears. Beyond these bounds, sound, like a snowflake, left no signature. For these reasons, when Edison spoke “Mary Had a Little Lamb” into his phonograph, his words were a milestone of human progress equivalent to Neil Armstrong’s “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” while stepping onto the moon. With the phonograph, utterances, like a baby’s first words, could be heard and cherished at any time. Without Edison’s—or humanity’s—realizing it, however, Edison changed the shape of data. Information had undergone a metamorphosis from scribbles on parchment and words stamped on paper with Gutenberg’s printing press to Edison’s pricks in tin.

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