Although I fear not enough serious preservation work is being done to stop the erosion of cultural treasures, languages supplanted, traditions encroached upon and withering, worthy songs only existing as a resampled thread, one individual is working to prevent endangered and dated sounds from electronics and gadgets from slipping likewise into obscurity.
Indeed, how many people have no memory of the squelch of a modem, the ker-chunk of a video cassette player, the recoil of a rotary phone, the clacking of a typewriter keyboard, the purr and hum of any number of solid-state appliances, or the triumphal start-up reveries and fanfares of retiring and obsolete computer platforms or classic and bitty ring-tone melodies? Such noises can be quite evocative and are prone to being quickly replaced with something more elite and polished, with no whirring of gears. The collection is a small one and by its nature, based on personal experience, but is soliciting ideas for its archive. Wunderkammern like this, though, I think ought to have a physical address too, in order to anchor them from the whoosh and over-abundance of the curator called the internet. What threatened sounds and jingles would you nominate for conservation?
