Broadcasting—Pulse of Universal Life

Radio Record, Volume IV, Issue 16, 31 October 1930, Page 10

Broadcasting—Pulse of Universal Life

"BROADCASTING is the most revolutionary thing that has happened in the modern world," says Mr. A. G. Gardiner, in, the London "Star." "It is as though by a wave of a fairy’s wand the loneliest may hold audience of the whole earth and -feel the pulse of the universal life in bedroom or: kitchen. We touch a gadget and the dumb sky rains down music and song, dance, and speed. ... We have come into an un-dreamed-of heritage of music. No longer is the opera the privilege of the few. It is as free as the air. We hobnob with the best. society of all the ages, and our intellectual and spiritual pockets jingle with abundance of precious coin we had never expected to handle. We are learning to distinguish between the good and the bad, the great and the tawdry. "Who can measure the social effects of these magical ministrations? We are becoming an educated, and, perhaps, a civilised people. Insensibly we are catching far-off strains and new meanings and the taste for the things of the mind that had been the exclusive possession of the few. ... We are still only on the threshold the possi-’ bilities of broadcasting. It strikes the note of the new time and of the new world that is so miraculously taking shape before our eyes-the world in which,.in spite of our parochial tariffs and nationalisms, the larger compulsions of life are leading to that ‘federation of the world’ which was the poet’s dream and is to-day seen to be the only condition on which the white cilivisation can survive. "Of that new adventure in the tale of mankind the universal air, now literally as full of ‘sweet sounds’ as the air of Caliban’s isle, is the symbol. The future of mankind is in the air, and the directing spirit is the miracle of wireless."