A few weeks ago, the music writer Dave Tompkins took a podium in one of NYU’s many windowless annexes to promote his upcoming book, How To Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder From World War II To Hip-Hop.

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While the Cylons in the original 1978 "Battlestar Galactica" definitely looked like actors in chrome suits, they at least sounded like robots. Cylon Centurions spoke with a low-pitched synthesized ...