Malleability and Machines: Glenn Gould and the Technological Self.

The Pianist Glenn Gould has often been portrayed as a musical idealist who embraced mundane recording media as a way of escaping the anxiety of the concert hall. In pursuing his musical ideals, however, Gould obsessed over material objects-the qualities of a chair, the action of piano keys, the placement of splices in magnetic tape. This paper argues that for him, the detailed properties of machines and electronic media were crucial, not just as tools for pursuing disembodied aesthetic aims, but as instruments and material sites for a moral project. Locating Gould's concerns among the techniques and technologies that inspired him, the concert hall he despised, and the jazz and chance music he tolerated, the paper explores how Gould's famed philosophy of technology was rooted in a "technological self" that tied morality and aesthetics, and intimacy and isolation, to concrete ideals for the kinds of people we ought to be.

Listening to the Mind: Tracing the Auditory History of Mental Illness in Archives and Exhibitions.

With increasing interest in the representation of histories of mental health in museums, sound has played a key role as a tool to access a range of voices. This essay discusses how sound can be used to give voice to those previously silenced. The focus is on the use of sound recording in the history of mental health care, and the archival sources left behind for potential reuse. Exhibition strategies explored include the use of sound to interrogate established narratives, to interrupt associations visitors make when viewing the material culture of mental health, and to foster empathic listening among audiences.

Before the beginning: the development of tools of the trade.

Before the beginning of the Journal of Child Language in 1974 three technological innovations had set the stage for a fundamental expansion and revision of our understanding of the processes of child language acquisition. Portable audio and video recorders changed both the quantity and quality of data. Computers made it possible to store and search large corpora, to rapidly carry out statistical analyses of the distribution of linguistic forms and their changes over time, and to simulate models of acquisition. This essay is a personal and historical overview of the unexpected consequences of those technological innovations for the study of child language. In looking to the future, another tool, linguistic typology, is essential for building models of language acquisition.

Nuclear brinkmanship: a study in non-linguistic communication.

This article examines meaning making with nuclear bombs and military manoeuvres. The data is verbatim audio recordings from the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The analysis uses concepts from impression management and dialogism. It is found that actions often speak louder than words and that even non-linguistic communication with nuclear weapons is often oriented to third-parties, in this case, world opinion. A novel process of 'staging the other' is identified, that is, when one side tries to create a situation which will force the other side to act in a way which will create a negative impression on world opinion. Staging the other is a subtle form of meaning making for it entails shaping how third parties will view a situation without those third parties being aware of the intentionality of the communication.