Author Archives: d.perry

‘…here’s a sound that I can’t hear. It’s a high-frequency, around 17.4 kHz. I can’t hear it because that frequency of sound (and anything above it) is typically only audible to people under 25. It’s the result of a phenomenon called presbycusis, a term used for this progressive, age-related form of hearing loss.

In 2005, Howard Stapleton adopted this frequency for an invention he called The Mosquito, an ultrasonic alarm designed to “disperse unwanted youth gatherings” and “combat vandalism,” as the company puts it. Because the sound is only audible to those under 25, UK business owners — including even McDonald’s — can flick on The Mosquito alarm to repel potential vandals while retaining the patronage of the 25+ crowd who can’t hear it. Adults are sneaky fucks.’

“Some have argued that the ways in which the design of software structures human cognitive processes can have a detrimental effect on performance. For example, criticism has been directed at the way Microsoft’s successful PowerPoint application has shaped the rules of giving presentations, encouraging a dull linearity of bullet-pointed texted over deeper, more discursive talks; the software overtly focuses the audience on the presentation format and not its content.

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In the network age, information (music included) has become musicalized, which is to say, the appearance of information (here, music) is more a spectacle than the musical content itself.”

Andrew Feenberg writes that “human beings can only act on a system to which they themselves belong. This is the practical consequence of being an embodied being. Every one of our interventions returns to us in some form as a feedback from our objects.”