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Microphone

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Microphone

By: Ralph Jones
Narrated by: Christopher Naylor
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Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Since its invention more than 150 years ago, the microphone transformed the world in an instant. Yet its evolution and integration into our daily lives has been comparatively gradual – so gradual, crucially, that it is easy to forget just how much we take it for granted. Every phone has a microphone. Every laptop has a microphone. We are surrounded by microphones.

The microphone wields enormous power. But when we're ‘on mic’ we aren't just powerful, we're vulnerable. Microphones can destroy careers as quickly as make them. The microphone is inextricable from our need to be heard. This book takes a curious, always humorous look at this object as a metaphor for power and how the fulfillment of our desire to be heard has created a multi-headed beast we are still learning how to tame.©2023 Haaris Naqvi (P)2026 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Philosophy Popular Culture Social Sciences
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Reviews

An admirably succinct survey of the microphone-enabled entrenchment of mass media in global culture.
Breezy, informative, and thought-provoking, Ralph Jones's meditation on the microphone explores how this late-19th century invention (and its partner, the amplifier) has affected what, where, and how we hear, every day of our lives.
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