On April 30, 2018, our HIST 390 class talked about various advancements in technology throughout history and discussed the impact that they had on society.  As technology slowly began to become more and more advanced, it seemed that jobs and occupations became more and more deskilled as a result.  Technology just seemed to further sever the connection between objects and labor meant to obtain said objects.  For example, 1905 – 1925 became the “Acoustic Recording Era”, or the “No Microphone Era”.  Back then, singing was instead done into a big cone that was supposed to capture all of the potential sound that was supposed to be recorded.  Eventually, electrical recording after 1925 with vacuum tubes and microphones replaced such practices, with the ribbon mic being fairly popular, as artists could swear that you could hear the difference.  It was then replaced by tape recording in 1952, which revolutionized the game completely, mainly because people realized that you could whisper and talk normally into it and the recording would still be heard loud and clear.  Frank Sinatra was an example of an artist who benefited greatly from this change, as he could get away with his whispery and low voice type of singing.  This, however, also had an effect on politics.  Before this time, politicians had to be loud in order to be heard, but with this new advancement in technology, politicians such as Franklin Roosevelt could initiate “fireside chats”, which were basically Franklin Roosevelt talking normally to the American public about issues concerning the country and what he was planning to fix such issues.  Technology didn’t stop there, however, by the 1970s there was multitrack tape, and by the 1980s there was digital recording, which connected sound waves and converted it into sampled information, with sampler sound typically running at 44,000 times per second.  The creation of mp3s then helped make sure that even more audio information was not “lost” in the process.

There is really nothing more to say other than what a marvel technology has become, especially when comparing everything in the past to today.  I can only imagine how hard it would have been for Frank Sinatra or Franklin Roosevelt to succeed without such technological advances to aid them in taking advantage of their own personal style of doing things.  They probably wouldn’t have been famous or even a singer or politician to begin with if these advances in technology hadn’t happened!  How lucky for the two of them, as well as many others just like them.  I can only imagine how much work it would have been to have made and recorded music back in the day.  It must’ve been a painstakingly long and annoying process just to get the sound “just right”.  Nowadays with autotune, however, I wonder if, in the future, technology will become so advanced that even those who are normally not very good singers will also become famous?  Yes, we can make jokes that that already happens today, but how far can we possibly take it in the future as technology continues to improve?  The celebrity scene may actually get legitimately exciting because of it.