A New Artist: Part Scribe, Part Musician Epic poems of oral traditions fuse the musician and scribe into one artist, written word creates a rift between the two characters, and sound recording fuses them once again—challenging their separate definition while giving birth to a new artist in the tribal culture of the Information Age. The telegraph and telephone were the first inventions of the Information Age; the phonograph was the third, but it was the first to produce a static medium. Upon its invention it was the most dense and accurate medium of information storage ever created, second only to the human brain. The phonograph can be seen as a reaction to the telephone, capturing mankind's voice again after it had runaway into the telephone wire. The work of Thomas Young—the inventor of the visual phonograph predicted the use of recorded sound as a tool of information collection and storage; the phonograph was the first device truly capable of performing this task in a manner suitable for the demands of modern science and a growing number of musicians frustrated with the current means of recording musical ideas. Marshall McLuhan, media guru and perhaps the man most aware of the effects of modern technology on people has pointed out that the human species evolves through its ability to analyze and understand its environment through technology. The birth of the phonograph was the culmination of a pursuit to augment an inherent cognitive trait; and it helped to mark the dawn of a new era with this as its aim. This new artist, the sound artist, would appear in many supposedly different roles, each time deeply involved with emerging technology. The insight and invention of sound artists would spur the growth of, and provide points of reflection in, a world rapidly transforming under the pressure of electric innovation. The work of sound artists during the 20th century is in general a human response to the dehumanizing effect of technological progress. Keeping constant pace with this progress, the sound artists ensure their work remains relevant as new media and formats grow and decay.