NEW YORK: "I just got my voice back," writes the author, who had just emerged from a two weeks of cloister-like silence following vocal cord surgery. But her self-imposed retreat did more than allow her a chance to heal.
She had a chance to reflect on the human inclination to preserve images, but not sounds. "I have only one brief recording - a minute or two - of the way I sounded 20 years ago," she says, although she has plenty of photos from that same period. The smartphone age, with its ability to capture audio as well as video, hasn't changed that - yet. Why? Courtesy The New York Times.