“Radio, someone still loves you”[1]
"Background" technology...
Immortalized at Live Aid in 1985, Queen’s “Radio Ga Ga” pleads for the continued relevance of radio in a “video”-dominated pop culture. A band of that magnitude may have been a dominant presence in that nouveau format, but its members were raised on the older technology and unwilling to countenance its demise. This was the beginning of the corporatization of the pop-music airwaves, and the end of the earlier era of independent and powerful FM DJs—the hitmakers and tastemakers of the 60s and 70s. That 80s development indeed produced, as Roger Taylor’s original lyric put it, “Radio Ca Ca.”
My home theater receiver is called a “receiver” because, like my c. 1978 stereo receiver (which I wish I still had), it has a built-in radio tuner.
Mine was just like this, if I remember clearly
I’ve had the home theater receiver for years but I’ve never used the tuner part. I don’t have an antenna hooked up to it. I don’t listen to the radio—ever. I stream music and that’s it. My collection of 1,000+ CDs, also begun in 1985, is my backup. But I long ago “ripped” them all onto a hard drive so I could stream their contents. They’re packed away in alphabetized padded albums under the kids’ room bed.
In the back corner of one of the chest-height bookcases in the dining room sits a pretty little wooden box with a brushed-aluminum faceplate and a big round knob. It’s a Tivoli Audio Model 1—a radio, designed by the late brilliant audio engineer Henry Kloss, late in his life. We’ve had it for, I don’t know, twenty years or more. We never use it. Well, almost never.
Tivoli Audio Model 1 (and Snoop on a Stoop—’tis the season)
In September 2018, we weathered a strong hurricane that dumped a record amount of rain on us, causing record flooding. We have a whole-house generator, so we had power, but there was no internet. There was no way to get weather reports, advisories, warnings, updates. Except there was—the Tivoli Audio Model 1, sitting quietly in the corner. Switch it on, tune the dial, and there you go. The radio waves do not go away. They are beaming into the house and into deep space. Dedicated underpaid people broadcast good music and real news from local affiliates of National Public Radio. They kept us connected through the storm.
Those of us here on the coast fared far better in 2018 than those in the mountains did a few months ago. I just saw a 2024-recap in the Raleigh News & Observer. One of the pieces paid tribute to the “ham” (amateur) radio operators who facilitated emergency connectivity after the day-to-day infrastructure was mostly buried or swept away—cell towers, fiber-optic cable, etc. The radio waves are still there, if you know how to dial them in. Most don’t. They do.
Radio has become, to some extent, sort of a “background” technology—still there, still in use, but overshadowed in its previous roles by newer means of transmission and reception. It has its disadvantages, depending somewhat on what wavelength we’re talking about. Static, fluctuations in signal strength, atmospheric interference, the fact that it can be intercepted by anyone with the right receiver (pertinent to those concerned with security and secrecy). On the other hand, “FM/No static at all…”—some of us remember just how good Steely Dan could sound on a strong FM signal on a good sound system. Radio doesn’t require satellites in space. It doesn’t require networks of cables. It doesn’t require giant towers. Shortwave radio can, in skilled hands, allow someone in Australia to talk to someone in Finland. Single sideband allows an injured sailor in the middle of the Indian Ocean to talk to a doctor in Japan. So does Starlink, but single sideband radio is not owned by the finances and whims of Elon Musk.
I think this idea of “background technology” is yet another way to get at the themes raised by David Edgerton in The Shock of the Old—themes I cannot, and have no desire to, escape, because our ability to see through the distorted perception of humans-and-technology as fast-paced innovation is critical to our understanding of how we actually use technology, how technology actually works, and how corporate capitalism and its political allies use distorting messaging about it to further their agendas—agendas we can no longer afford to indulge.
Radio will be there. Sail will be there. Hammers will be there. We don’t need to construct yet another tiresome post-apocalyptic dystopia to realize the continuing utility of technologies that are not quite as vulnerable to other technologies—and to the whims of those who own the technologies upon which those vulnerable technologies depend—as the foregrounded ones we get up in the morning and use every day. When we read about big disasters like what Hurricane Helene did to western North Carolina, what we read about is how resourceful people are—at turning to the technologies that are still available to do what needs to be done after the more vulnerable ones have gone offline, underwater, or under the mud. So, technological resourcefulness isn’t just about figuring out the quantum computer. It’s also about turning around and knowing when, and how, to use something your grandparents were better at than you ever will be.
If we cease to exist as a species—when our planet burns up in the Sun—Queen will keep moving through space at the speed of light. On radio waves.
This is dedicated to the memory of Prof. Lewis “Skip” Fischer, who, I flatter myself, would have appreciated it.
Raleigh N&O piece: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article296702729.html (note: I didn’t hit a paywall here, for some reason, but I can’t guarantee you won’t)
[1] Roger Taylor, “Radio Ga Ga,” Queen.