I have a bit of an aversion to a couple of words used in song lyrics. The words “monkey” and “telephone” always make me cringe when they are used in a song. The word telephone irritates me mostly because of the hand gestures with the thumb and little finger that the singer does whilst looking into the camera. Maybe the word telephone is overused and many would say that phones in general are overused too. There are now officially more cell phones than people in Ireland and there are over 1 billion of them being used worldwide. America manages to increase this total by 65,000 a day alone. Sound waves are used in so many appliances. There is the radio, radio controlled devices. pagers, televisions, satellites radios, walkie-talkies, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth not to mention all the natural frequencies that are used in nature and from space. The electromagnetic spectrum that is used is a finite resource; the number and variety of gadgets emitting electromagnetic energy continue to grow. As the airwaves become more crowded, signals from devices operating in neighbouring frequencies spill into one another's bands. When spectrum allocation frays at the edges, devices go haywire: radio stations merge in and out of each others signals and the emergency services frequencies get squeezed out. Phone conversations come through over baby monitors and you can hear taxis talking to one another through the telly. Some observers fear that interference is becoming so severe that people will get very sensitive to the constant bombardment of sound and soon there won't be enough spectrum to go around. They obviously haven’t been to Inishowen. I drive around the peninsula often and there are days when I can neither pick up a radio station of get a signal on my phone…...bliss. There is a place in West Virginia America that beats this though. This haven has been designated a National Radio Quiet Zone and covers an area of 13,000 square miles which is nearly free of electromagnetic interference.
The Quiet Zone is a generous margin of mountainous terrain and rustic communities surrounding the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, a 485-foot, €25 million structure that emerges from this remote valley. Astronomers there observe the universe by studying faint radio waves emitted by stars, evaporating comets, and distant galaxies. These signals inhabit many areas of the electromagnetic spectrum - often the same areas prized by broadcasters, cellular providers, and other communications companies. In the past few years, however, the job of keeping out interference in this area has become overwhelming. The wireless revolution has swept the world. So now in the Quiet Zone there is a group of dedicated boffins working out exactly how we can operate our technological society in a world where all of the sound wave frequencies have been used up. A friend of mine thinks that the same thing will happen with wave and wind power. His theory is that we will harness so much of it that eventually the seas will be still and the winds will be no more (I ought to mix with happier people!) I think we are safe for a while in Inishowen though. At the moment I’m more interested in why the word “Monkey” sounds so irritating in songs.
Environmental.
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