Thank you to everyone who provided feedback – I am excited to see that the article has generated some discussion on the topic. I would like to respond in order to clarify some issues that were received as shortcomings or oversights.

Writing a history is always a difficult task, and the result will always be less than definitive because it represents one perspective among many. Writing a history spanning 40+ years within strong space constraints necessarily involves making some tough decisions about what to include and omit. Our intentions in writing this article were not so much to make a rhetorical argument about how sound in computing has developed (with A and B leading to C, which then influenced D and E), as to highlight some things that have happened in the past and are often unknown to modern designers.

We also rather specifically avoided dealing with Sound and Music Computing because it is too large a topic for such a short article. The article mentions CIRSAC because it is well-documented and stands as the first example of a computer designed for calculation but used to produce designed sounds. We told the story of the Reed students because it is interesting and undocumented (rather than historically important), and we otherwise tried to stay away from the topic of music. If we were to delve into such a topic (one which is near and dear to my own heart), I believe that we might have to begin the article with the Telharmonium rather than mainframes, and give detailed discussion to the development of synthesizers and the like. While these things are historically important, I believe that they had a much greater influence on the form and technology of sound in computing, than upon the way we think about sound when designing.

Finally, I would like to clarify our stance regarding current research into sound and computing. In my own mind, as a practicing designer who deals primarily with graphic user interfaces, I feel that there is a poverty of research into sound when compared to the amount of academic effort devoted to researching the graphic interface (or even haptic and gestural interfaces). I personally believe that sound is as important as the graphic interface, and as such should receive significantly more attention by the design community at large.

Again, thank you to everyone who provided feedback. I hope that this short response helps clarify our position and intentions with the article. If the necessarily short treatment given the topic in this article leads to other perspectives or more complete treatments then that is fantastic!