scannell: i'd appreciate what you are saying. that information. is that theaying thing we now take for granted as the most natural thing, namely talk on radio, was something that had to be discovered. that people had to learn how to do it. but it is a specific kind of form. the most extraordinary thing is that talk literally is prehistoric until sound recording comes along. writing is as old as recorded history. talkow people talk, what sounded like, how people related to each other through speech -- we don't know until radio and television came along. whicher the extent to radio and television has contributed to helping us all to learn to talk to each other in new kinds of ways. it used to be said of television that it kills talk. i can't think of a more idiotic to say about television. radio and television gave everybody things to talk about outside and above their own thatience, in ways hitherto had been simply impossible. >> we have a question way in the back. maybe we should follow up and have a chat. what you said you got me thinking when yo

scannell: my time is up or my number is up, sorry. i've got to take it. i am always overwhelmed, jack darador always said, when i hear the voice of someone who is dead, as i am not, when i see a photograph or image of a dead person. i can be touched presently by the recorded speech of someone who is dead. i can hear and be affected by a voice beyond the grave. for darador, the recording of the voice is, in his own words one of the most important phenomena of the 20th century. it gives a living presence the possibility of being there a new that is without equal and without precedents. the defining ontological characteristic of the human voice as it speaks or sings is liveness it has to be brought to life in ways that i have yet to show, but talk dies in the announcement of its enunciation. how shall it be known what is spoken? for you shall speak into the air. these are the famous words of st. paul's epistle to the corinthians and the title of the book on the history of the idea of communication "speaking into the air," in which john takes as two paradigms

. >> >> next, communication professor that scannell argues recorded sound is as important as film in as a keynote speaker conference in conjunction with the radio preservation task force. prof. scannell: national and international outrage is a newly created division of the library of congress that pulls together into one unit, all of the externally facing programs of the library. we

paddy scannell joined the department of communication at the university of michigan in 2006. he had already spent 30 years building one of the first undergraduate degree in media studies in the u.k. at the university of westminster, london. he is a founding editor of the journal of media, culture, and society which began publication in 1979 and is still going strong. his works not only include a social history of british broadcasting, but another one, broadcast talk. it is an edited volume that came out in the 1990's. it is a compilation of work. radio, what is it? it is talk. what kind of talk? very influential book. another one, radio television and modern life in 1996, which theorized the way media is integrated into the structure of everyday life. some people, having done all that, would be slowing down. in the early 2000's, patty announced that he was about to embark upon a trilogy of new works, three works that build upon each other, and by gosh, he has done it. the third is underway. the first volume came out 2007 was hailed as a magisterial overview of the development