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Microphone : Object Lessons - Ralph Jones

Microphone

By: Ralph Jones, Christopher Schaberg (Editor), Ian Bogost (Editor)

Paperback | 2 April 2026

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Available: 2nd April 2026

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Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Since its invention more than 150 years ago, the microphone transformed the world in an instant. Yet its evolution and integration into our daily lives has been comparatively gradual â" so gradual, crucially, that it is easy to forget just how much we take it for granted. Every phone has a microphone. Every laptop has a microphone. Everyone with a microphone has a podcast.

The microphone wields enormous power. But when we're âon micâ we aren't just powerful, we're vulnerable. Microphones can destroy careers as quickly as make them. The microphone is inextricable from our need to be heard. This book takes a curious, always humorous look at this object as a metaphor for power and how the fulfillment of our desire to be heard has created a multi-headed beast we are still learning how to tame.

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