Is Your Television Alive?
White noise and phantom images are just the beginning. The electronic aethyr is still the great unexplored country.
There is a whole new study developing around the electro-aethyr, or EA as it is sometimes known. Like all new areas of study, the interest in the electronic aethyr, has been developing for some time.
In the early days of radio, telephony and phonography, the very nature of the new communication medium may have hit a nerve. For the first time, disembodied voices were appearing like magic. Imagine, if you will, sitting on a sofa in front of the fireplace listening to a haunting melody sung by a favorite crooner who was, unfortunately dead for many months. Today we are well accustomed to such things, but what a potent brew of nostalgia it must have cased, mixed uncomfortably with the disquieting fear of hearing the dead speak from a music box.
I imagine there was a cold shiver that shook that listener when the thought crossed his or her mind that maybe what was causing the music box to play was actually alive. Perhaps the realization that only the same music played over and over again calmed that listener’s nerves. But I remember an old woman once telling me that her mother swore her phonograph occasionally played songs that were not on the album. It would happen to her just after midnight. The lyrics were German, and half way through the song would just fade away.
Are there really ghosts in our machines?
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