Dr. Jonathan Sterne teaches in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. He is author of The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (available from Duke University Press), which rewrites the history of sound technologies such as the telephone, phonograph and radio, and argues for the centrality of sound to our understandings of modernity. His journal articles and book chapters cover a wide range of issues in media, technology, and the politics of culture such as: Muzak as sonic architecture; histories of television networking technologies, trains and telegraphs; the racial politics of cyberculture; and the philosophy of computer trash.

Originally trained in cultural studies and continental philosophy, Sterne branched out into historical and documentary research. His work thus combines materials recovered from the esoteric world of archives and forgotten documents with big questions that cross disciplines, paradigms, and fashions. He strives for a balance of invention, recovery, vigor and humor in his work.

His next book, tentatively titled MP3: the Meaning of a Format, connected the cultural and institutional forces behind the development of the mp3 format in the 1980s and early 1990s with long-term trends in the development of telecommunications, psychoacoustics and cybernetics. The book is at once a study of the world’s most common audio format (more recordings exist as mp3s than in any other format or medium) and a history of hearing in a media-saturated world.

Sterne has been online since 1982, and he has seen cyberspace evolve from a loose network of bulletin boards to the massive internet as we know it today.

Since 1994, he has been involved in producing Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life, one of the ongest continuously-running publication on the internet.

In addition to writing for Bad Subjects and sometimes other alternative media outlets like Tape Op, Punk Planet, and Other Magazine, Sterne has occasionally been interviewed in mainstream media outlets such as Wired Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Toronto Star, La Presse, CBC, Fox News and National Public Radio.

Sterne has played bass since he was 10 years old and has performed and recorded with several rock bands, a few jazz acts, and a school orchestra. An aspiring amateur audio engineer, he runs a small not-for-profit home studio.

His current band, Lo-Boy, released their first CD in spring of 2003, and is mixing their second, as yet untitled album.