Another fascinating volume in the Object Lessons series. I love these books and this one was no exception. I learned so much from this interesting look at alarms in history, life, and art.

One’s response to the books in this wonderful Object Lessons series is inevitably always going to be personal. Some work for the reader more than others do. Some amuse and entertain, some feel too self-indulgent, some irritate. For me this was one of the better ones, which both engaged me and made me think. It’s an original and thoughtful look at alarms in all their many manifestations, and our responses to them. The author cleverly explores alarms in in art, culture and the media, plus in history, from the early hilltop fire beacons to today’s hi-tech ones. Bennett avoids too much personal memoir and anecdote to concentrate on her subject, which she has meticulously researched, and I very much enjoyed her wide-ranging account.

Alarms wake us up in the morning. Alarms let us know there is danger, our ever-watchful sentinel. Alice Bennet examines the alarm in all its contexts. The Dada artist recreated a clock, but artists as the face and hands.

This one didn't hold my attention until the conclusion of how alarms have been used against us to ensure compliance. She uses examples such as Dave Egger's The Circle and how the events in the fiction book are becoming all too common. We should also be alarmed by this.

Consider the alarm, and what it is supposed to do. Surely it's to shriek at us, to wake us up, to alert us to a fire or smoke or carbon monoxide or the presence of a police car, or some such. But obviously it's not supposed to do that at all – it is supposed to be silent, attentive for our own sakes, letting us sleep well and in silence and then waking us up. That brief bit of writing probably exceeds all the thinking about alarms I've done before reading this book, but here clearly the author has done more. In finding art that points to the industrial time we live in, that negates the body clock for another, with alarms, to looking at burglar alarms that activate the fight or flight response in the person indoors probably more than it does those trying to get in, this is the semiology of the alarm.

It's perfectly suited to this series as a result, except it doesn't go uber-lefty at any times, it doesn't feature pointless memoir alongside its main academic thrust, and it leaves many of the flaws of earlier books in this franchise far aside. Perhaps, seeing that this is the second time in a row I've had the pleasure of saying that, things are on the up. Contrary-wise, the alarm bells are ringing… But for now this was not precisely a pleasure, for it is on the academic side of things, but remained interesting and logical throughout, making it hard to find disagreeable.

Continuing my up and down relationship with the Object Lessons series, short books that focus on the hidden history of everyday objects, we come to “Alarm” by Alice Bennett. Following the pattern, my last book was one I did not enjoy (“Mushroom” by Sara Rich), so I would think that this would be an interesting entry. And I was correct.

Ms. Bennett takes us through the history and uses of alarms throughout the ages, and our difficult relationship with them. After a brief anecdote about the use of signal fires, we start with the modern alarm clock, originally advertised as a way to get deeper sleep (as opposed to my current fear of a power failure!). Ms. Bennett expresses how alarms have been used to allow us to relax our vigilance, how the alarm has taken away the need for us to be ever vigilant, to let technology take over the guard. Smoke detectors obviously constitute another level of protection, the invention of which was for a different purpose altogether. We also explore burglar alarms, false alarms, sirens. The social implications of police sirens, depending on your history and background, make for an interesting dichotomy about whether to feel fear or relief. And coming full circle to today’s smart watch technology, alarms now force us to be constantly vigilant about our weight, our steps, our health. What will be the next level?

A great blend of history, technology, philosophy, and a bit of social science as well. A great combination.

I requested and received a free advanced electronic copy from Bloomsbury Academic via NetGalley. Thank you!

Short, informative and piqued my interest in the other books in this series, which is new to me. Looks at the alarm from all angles and in a way that probes deeper than what could otherwise be a listened-to-but-forgotten podcast episode.

I am an enormous fan of the Object Lessons series. This book takes an object that I have never spent much time thinking about it and presents a deep dive that looks at the very idea of alarms from many angles, both practical and philosophical. The author reminds us that alarms are contradictory in that they both save us from constant vigilance and also seize our attention with extreme urgency. In other words, alarms are an extension of our attention. This is a fascinating idea, which the author carries further into the idea of an alarm as a type of prothesis. She than goes on to examine the social and cultural aspects of alarms by turning to specific types of alarms: the alarm clock, the fire alarm, the security alarm, the siren, and finally looks at what the implications are of a a number of false alarms and failures. I found this book beautifully written and always fascinating. I highly recommend.

Thanks to the publisher, Bloomsbury, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC.

Object Lessons, how I love thee.

This was another excellent addition to this series. With chapters headed Clock, Fire, Siren, Security, Siren, "Failure, False, Fatigue", and Future, Bennett takes us on a rollicking ride through alarms. There's history and technology, sure. But there's also art and culture, and the ways in which alarms are not neutral objects or sounds but can mean different things - particularly, she stresses, in America, where police sirens can mean different things depending on your skin colour (and I suspect the same thing may be true in Australia, at least to some extent). The idea of alarms as a prosthetic is profound - supplementing or replacing our own vigilance; but of course, now smart watches etc are encouraging us to be MORE vigilant ('closing the ring'). Also, feeding into the capitalist world (my intention to never have one was significantly reinforced by reading this.)

Also, starting a book about alarms with Aeschylus' Agamemnon, comparing the watchman, Clytemnestra's alarm system, and Cassandra as alarm? INSPIRED.

Loved it. One of my favourites to date.

An Object Lesson requested from Netgalley as much as anything because of my appalled fascination with the the screaming alarm bells in post-Adventure Time animation The Owl House, which were haunting me at around the time this went up for request. Also one which straddles my boundary regarding whether or not the subject is an actual object, given alarm clocks were until quite recently a solid thing, but are now among the many items whose function has passed to the smartphone. But, as Bennett suggests, there was always something paradoxical about them – rude awakening is their function, and yet they are also the guarantor of a decent sleep because they take on the responsibility of making sure you don't miss whatever it is you're not meant to be missing. The idea of the alarm as a vigilance prosthesis is intriguing, as also the notion that the fire alarm in particular is a rarity among labour-saving devices in taking over a paternal rather than maternal chore – although once you think about it, that notion starts to look a little shaky; doesn't the same go for the lawnmower? And this is before we boggle at the bit about the smoke alarm's initial publicity problem, given it's allegedly a device which most of its owners will never notice in action. Clearly Bennett hails from some utopian parallel world where they only alert you to actual fires (or, and this she does discuss at legitimate length, their own need for new batteries), rather than ours, where they mainly tell you that someone is making toast, or thinking about making toast, or has just done an impression of Matt Berry as Steven Toast. The mention of earlier models, where other methods resulted in a still higher rate of false alarms, is itself alarming even to consider.

There's also discussion here of alarms in culture, right back to the chain of signal fires in Aeschylus' Agamemnon and then on up to heist films (ah, the laser maze) and KRS-One; even discussion of art itself as an alarm of sorts, in line with the notion of defamiliarisation, shaking us out of our sleepwalking – though I'm not sure that Shklovksy is a better illustration of this than the line I've always associated with Kafka about how art should be a bucket of cold water at midnight. Which said, I now can't find a trace of that line anywhere, so maybe I'm remembering it from another parallel universe, having myself unwittingly slid here from there, just as Bennett has come to us from the world of accurate smoke detectors. Another moment where I wondered which of us was from the antimatter universe arose when she suggested that, as adults, we might find ourselves sympathising with the boy who cried wolf. No; from as early as I can remember, right through to 45, I have consistently been of the opinion that on the vast majority of occasions when children were making noise for attention, I'd much prefer it if they didn't. But on the whole I enjoyed the material looking at life with a theoretical eye more than the cultural criticism. I was especially taken with the inquiry into the snooze button, pointing out that it's a way for capitalism finally to intrude on sleep, interrupt it, and then sell it back to us. As someone who's always hated the bastard things, it's good having authorities to quote on that point too. The book seems, alas, to have been finalised before that survivalist twonk recently revealed that he has renamed his alarm clock an 'opportunity clock'. A shame, as I'm sure Bennett would have a word or two to say about this, and unlike mine they might even be printable.

Alice Bennett's entry in the Object Lessons series, Alarm, "is about the attention-grabbing but unobtrusive alarm as an object that organises and administers feelings." ( pg 1). Bennett takes us through the uses and capabilities of alarms as technologies, art, literature, in the present and the near future.

Bennett divides the work into six chapters, each focused on a particular type of alarm. Through these chapters we move from the personal and routine to the institutional and societal, ending with the blending of personal and societal. Starting with the alarm clock, as most of us do ourselves, Bennett uses the alarm to discuss the ways we measure our emphasize meaning. Of particular timeliness is the chapter on "siren" that explores the American and African American relation to the police siren, both in it's surveillance and interpretation through music and art. The final two chapters detail technologically dominate monitored dystopian societies and their contemporaries in our world, such as the patents pursued by Amazon for worker monitoring.

Alarm is a thoughtful entry in the Object Lessons series where one learns about alarm clocks, fire alarms, security alarms, sirens and the various mobile/smart phone based alarms and alerts. Bennett does well balancing humor as exemplified in descriptions of some theatrical works or a sample script of a computer systems internal dialogue with the seriousness and necessity of emergency drills, security infrastructure and racial disparity.

I enjoy this series of Object Lessons books because you're never too sure what you're going to get.

Alarm by Alice Bennett is a thoughtful essay considering alarms - their function in both allowing relaxation of constant vigilance on a day-to-day basis, yet demanding immediate action when needed. It made me look at my alarm clock in quite a different way!