{"id":661,"date":"2017-02-28T09:10:32","date_gmt":"2017-02-28T09:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/?p=661"},"modified":"2017-02-28T14:11:51","modified_gmt":"2017-02-28T14:11:51","slug":"661","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/2017\/02\/28\/661\/","title":{"rendered":"Edison’s spirit-phone and its continual power to haunt"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>
A spooky phone available for purchase on Terapeak.com<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Edison\u2019s experiment and the modern-day talk of it in the Atlas Obscura article harkens back to the idea of \u201chaunting,\u201d and how haunting manifests itself in our everyday use of technology. Edison\u2019s \u201cspirit phone,\u201d though certainly not an effective apparatus for contacting the dead, is still at work haunting us today as we read articles about it. The trajectory of Edison\u2019s spirit phone, too, has a haunted storyline. Think of the editor of the 1948 English version of his diary who \u201ckilled\u201d the chapter on the spirit phone, thereby contributing to the murder of this part of Edison\u2019s legacy (despite the recognition it got during his lifetime).<\/p>\n

However, Edison\u2019s failure to reach the spirit world with technological innovation does little to dissuade the belief in such a world\u2014if anything, we could consider it a contribution to this mysterious place. Edison\u2019s idea that the particles of every personality were indestructible lends itself to the idea that the whole world is haunted with these former humans. In some sense, to Edison, the debate was not over whether these \u201cghosts\u201d existed, but rather if they could be reached. This thinking is a far cry from ghost-detecting apps or Ouija boards.<\/p>\n

Edison\u2019s failed spirit phone is not the most interesting part of the story, at least not to me\u2014to think that Edison, a great innovator and inventor, would seriously consider accessing the personalities of the departed is one thing, but considering it in context is fascinating. When imagining a world in which the phonograph seemed an attempt to fool death, it\u2019s not impossible to see why people of the 1920\u2019s would believe that literally anything is possible, and why the phone call from the dead remains such a popular horror trope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edison\u2019s experiment and the modern-day talk of it in the Atlas Obscura article harkens back to the idea of \u201chaunting,\u201d and how haunting manifests itself in our everyday use of technology. Edison\u2019s \u201cspirit phone,\u201d though certainly not an effective apparatus for contacting the dead, is still at work haunting us today as we read articles … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Edison’s spirit-phone and its continual power to haunt”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[96,102],"class_list":["post-661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-group-a","tag-edison","tag-haunted-phone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/109"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":670,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661\/revisions\/670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}