Has anyone done a study or looked into the rate at which language
changes with vs. without the influence of audio recordings, telephones
etc. ?

When I talk about how language changes I?m referring to how
incomprehensible old English texts can be to modern speakers. Will
people in 600 years be unable to understand texts from out time? Or
have technologies slowed the change in language?

One observation:

Have you listened to any rap music lately? Imagine how anyone from
even twenty years ago would feel if they suddenly were exposed to the
idioms and grammar present in modern-day music for the first time.
Since popular music is a heavy influence on how popular language
develops (and vice versa), one can actually hypothesize that
technology has increased the rate of change in language.

Regards,

aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher

This is a tricky question to address, since there is no way to know
for sure how language sounded in the days before sound recording.  You
could ask a similar question about written language before and after
the printing press.

It makes sense that having a fixed record (printed, or sound
recording) would tend to slow the rate of change in language.  On the
other hand, modern communication makes it much easier to correspond
with or hear people from other regions and countries who speak in
different accents or languages, and this could increase the rate of
change (for example, by borrowing words from other languages more
frequently).