Microphone

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Since its invention more than 150 years ago, the microphone transformed the world in an instant. Yet its evolution and integration into our daily lives has been comparatively gradual—so gradual, crucially, that it is easy to forget just how much we take it for granted. Every phone has a microphone. Every laptop has a microphone. We are surrounded by microphones.

The microphone wields enormous power. But when we're ‘on mic’ we aren't just powerful; we're vulnerable. Microphones can destroy careers as quickly as make them. The microphone is inextricable from our need to be heard.

Microphone by Ralph Jones takes a curious, always humorous look at this object as a metaphor for power and how the fulfilment of our desire to be heard has created a multi-headed beast we are still learning how to tame.