In a sense, the recording stylus and its reverse component have defeated time. Up until a little more than a generation ago, the sound of a word once uttered, a violin note once played, were possible treasures dropped into the none too safe repository of human memory; but the same sounds transferred to a wax or plastic or film or wire can live and vibrate again fifteen minutes or fifty years from now.
Judith C. Waller, Radio: The Fifth Estate
memory, recording, time