T homas Alva Edison, who invented the...

T homas Alva Edison, who invented the phonograph in 1877, appears to have had second thoughts about it. A distinctly Luddite note sounds in the recently discovered diary he kept not long before his death in 1931:

I fondly hoped I would go down in history as the man who brightened the world with the incandescent bulb. Instead, will I be known as the man who destroyed humankind’s ability to listen?

Take any musical event. (Editor’s note: Take today’s concert by the Riga Dome Boys’ Choir, Latvia’s finest, at 3 p.m. at the Westwood United Methodist Church, 10497 Wilshire Blvd. Donation $20, children under 13 free. Information: (310) 207-5247.) The sounds of the music (sacred and classical, including Bach, Mendelssohn and Mozart) vibrate the air, then our eardrums. Then they’re gone.

Or they should be.

Time was, when the symphony orchestra played, or the cowboy on the far side of the campfire blew his harmonica, or your mother sang a lullaby, you listened. If you didn’t, you missed it.

But once I invented that infernal machine, I greased the skids for the unlimited reproduction, duplication, manipulation and proliferation of sound.

I thought I would bring music into every home, but I also brought it into subways, restrooms, dentist’s offices, elevators, cars--even tents in the wilderness.

Tin Pan Alley made us impatient with regional talent. Yet we listened to records by world-famous musicians less closely than we used to listen to the town band--because we knew we could play them over and over again. The surprise of music vanished--the uniqueness of each interruption of silence by a pleasing sound. Music became a background noise, an irritating buzz, something we learned not to listen to (though silence, when it came, began to seem unnatural).

As my life nears its end, I find I can see around corners. I predict that next year, batting against the Cubs--yes, the Cubs!--in the World Series, Babe Ruth will hit a home run into the center-field stands exactly where he had pointed, or was thought to point. The unique, fleeting moment gone, fans will argue for decades about whether the Babe “called his shot.”

Imagine how terrible it would be if motion-picture cameras could immediately play that moment back, from every angle, ad nauseam, subordinating speculation to mere fact, strangling the newborn legend in its cradle? Yet surely that, too, will happen.

We will soon live our lives with the same inattention we bring to music and sports, one ear or eye cocked for the instant replay. But at my age, 84, I can tell you for sure:

It only happens once.