The Background Noise of Our Modern Times

“Pressing the Mute Button on Our Daily Soundtrack” (Dec. 19) makes one think about the whole technological revolution. Sounds did not change measurably from Roman times until gunpowder, and then the steam engine and telegraph. Since then ... ? In my lifetime I have been particularly beholden to the sounds of engines -- the Model A, the B-36 shaking the world on takeoff, Phil Hills’ Ferrari Testa Rossa screaming down the back stretch at Riverside, an “old look” GM transit bus whining away from a bus stop. Yes -- these sounds are meaningful if you were there. But what will they mean to my grandchildren? You had to live them. Yet I am now startled when I hear the ring of a “real telephone”!

David Housh

Glendora

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It has taken the combination of fax and e-mail barely 15 years to extinguish the rather special sound of our telex machine chattering away -- mechanically, evenly, not like a typewriter -- as international messages came chattering in at all hours. STOP

David R. Ginsburg

Santa Monica