Conclusion: The Unheard and the Unknown

Abstract

Radio broadcasting arrived after the introduction of a series of momentous new communications technologies, including sound recording, sound reproduction, telephony and telegraphy. New imaging technologies and advanced printing techniques had made possible new kinds of increasingly realistic imagery in newspapers and magazines, forever altering the visual and imaginary cultures of advertising, consumerism and celebrity. The cinema, of course, went much further. Its progenitors built on existing visual entertainments such as vaudeville, light opera and theatrical panoramas to create an experiential environment in which sound and light conspired together to transform even the simplest actions into something else entirely. This rash of new ways to connect with one another was, arguably, symptomatic of the loud, often disorienting transformations of the wider cultures of late 19th-century popular culture, setting the stage for the dramatic transformations of the 20th century. The emergence of industrial production and consumer culture gradually shifted most of society into the purview of new sets of values which sanctioned periods of regular leisure, compulsive spending, apolitical passivity and a permissive but subtly coercive morality of individual fulfillment (Lears, 1983).

Let’s face it; no one is listening that closely.

FBi presenter

You want to say something, not just play music.

2XX presenter