The Sounds of Life: Karen Bakker, PhD on PYP 542

What do you get when you combine a reverential attitude toward the natural world with a high-tech approach to problem solving? You get the story told in Karen Bakker’s fabulous new book, The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants. In it, Dr Bakker writes both sharply and poetically about a world humming, buzzing, whistling, rattling, and singing - in frequencies that the human ear cannot apprehend. The inexpensive and easy to maintain audio recording devices that have accompanied the digital revolution are now allowing us to listen in to nature as she speaks to herself, and as her creatures speak to one another. Thanks to supercomputers, artificial intelligence algorithms for deep learning, and cadres of professional and amateur researchers, we’re learning that many beings communicate with sound, and some of them may even possess - are you sitting down? - language. That last word is an invitation to a fight at any nu