Over the next decade, phone tapping-listening in to conversations live-was not uncommon, and it was not long until clandestine microphones (“bugs”) began to appear. With telephony, however, came a new set of social and cultural expectations, listening contexts, and potential risks. Not long after that, curious hobbyists and devoted inventors alike experimented with singing songs and playing music from afar. The era of commercial telephony began when Thomas Edison, who had invented the phonograph just a year prior, telephoned from his home in Menlo Park, New Jersey, to Philadelphia in 1878. Music-specifically, the technologies we use to create, share, and listen to it-has been integral to the development of devices that let governments, other people, and companies eavesdrop. And yet the history of auditory surveillance is intertwined with one of our greatest sources of pleasure and entertainment. Auditory surveillance was the stuff of Cold War espionage and nefarious governments-not consumer convenience. Indeed, these devices-disguised by shiny bezels and colorful lights-are a far cry from the sorts of covert listening technologies we’re used to seeing in spy films or television thrillers. And in order for them to hear us, they have to always be listening.īut we weren’t always so welcoming of such auditory invasions. In order for these devices to do this, they have to be able to hear us. We ask Alexa to dim the lights, Siri to tell us the weather, or Google Home to play the new Lizzo album. Companies like Amazon, Google, and Apple have infiltrated our lives not by force or secrecy, but through glossy advertising and the promise of efficiency. This has perhaps never been quite so prominent as it is now in our current consumer climate, in which auditory surveillance is a valuable commodity.
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įor as long as we’ve been able to transmit sound through the ether, it seems, someone has been listening in.
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This article originally appeared in Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate.