Until radio came along, rapid, long-distance communication relied on coded signals: telegraph, primarily, where the famous dots and dashes had to be decoded by experts into written or spoken form. The invention of the radio changed all of this; for the first time, the medium itself did the decoding, and the voice message seemed to be delivered directly from speaker to listener. With the advent of the world wide web, the written word has become widely available with little expense or expertise required. But the written word itself is a coded version of speech where much is lost in transit. Ask a few friends, to read—with feeling—an excerpt from a play or novel, and see the wide range of interpretations.
For some years now, the Centennial Museum has had a limited number of
its Desert Diary series available through the web as audio presentations. As such audio
feeds become more and more popular, you can expect increasing numbers of such
presentations from museums and, especially, from the Centennial Museum. Tune in on the
Web!
Listen to the Audio (mp3 format) as recorded by KTEP, Public Radio for the Southwest.
Contributor: Arthur H. Harris, Laboratory for Environmental Biology, Centennial Museum, University of Texas at El Paso.
Desert Diary is a joint production of the Centennial Museum and KTEP National Public Radio at the University of Texas at El Paso.