It may well be that when we read a history of our day, the beep will be declared the defining noise of a generation. The beep is a purely human sound, one without any equivalent in nature. No animal, no plant, makes a beep.

You know the sound well. The beep begins and ends with the twin plosives “b” and “p” and in between offers a eee that lasts as long as we care to make it. That beep can be a dot or a dash, a mere blip or a long and sustained beeeeeeep. It can make itself known just once or it can repeat endlessly. Beeps come in many different contexts: our phones beep, email beeps, trucks beep while they back up, washers beep when a load of clothes is clean. No matter the context, the message is always the same: “pay attention to me!” Beeps always demand a response, even if that response is only to turn it off. We may need to look up from what we are doing and press a button, we may need to sprint out of the way of a moving car, we may need to throw some clothes into the dryer, but in every case a beep calls us to action; it calls us from one thing and to another.