Sound, technology, and language; the three very important factors that allow education and cultures to be shared and taught throughout multiple societies. Sound allows us to hear music and speech and understand what they mean through their tunes, what the original author/maker intended for their piece to be taken in by. Where language is the understanding of speech and music as well, but mainly through tone and as well as speech. Changing the intention through emotion. Technology is something that is used to share and enhance others on the information that we know and that others may not know.
Sound is a type of thing to help us understand how we can physically communicate when language and technology is not at our disposal. It allows us to understand how others expressed emotions and information through sound. An example being in W.E.D. Du Bois’ reading ‘Sorrow Songs’ and the ‘…rhythmic cry of the slave…’ The importance that the sounds of American slaves had telling the story of the filthy America they learned to know and live. “Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty.” Our history books may speak of the uglies of slavery but through these ‘sorrow songs’, we were able to hear the terrors that really were held in through the American slavery time period.
Technology is the part of our ability to store both language and sound to teach each other history and the possibilities our futures hold. As said in Emily Thompson’s passage ‘Sound, Modernity, and History’, “…the experience we described as ‘modernity’-an experience of profound temporal and spatial displacements, of often accelerated and diversified shocks, of new modes of society and of experience-has been shaped decisively by the technological media.” Thompson expresses the importance of having these sounds and languages being able to be heard in different ways for all people to understand history and learn from the past. Being able to store these things allow us to have an easy access to knowledge that other wise would have been hard to get a hold of.
Language, is the thing that connects us all no matter the society. The power of language is essentially the power of voice, the ability to express ourselves in a way that makes it easier for one to understand the meaning. It’s the thing that allows us to evolve our ability to be aware of what is right and what is wrong in our history and what is good and wrong for our future. As said in Saul Williams’ passage ‘The Future of Language’, he states “language usage is reflection of consciousness. thus, the future of language is connected to the ever-evolving state of human awareness. as we become more aware of out existing reality it becomes clearer that we live with the power to dictate our given situations and thus the power to determine our future.” This statement shows the importance that language holds. The future and the way that we share history is within the tool that is language. We learn what’s right and what’s wrong through our ability to voice our own language to one another.
