How does Mina's fascination with the phonograph reflect a more general fascination that the novel has with gadgetry?

Technology plays an important part in Dracula, and Mina, surely one of the earliest girl-geeks in literature, is fascinated by Seward's phonograph, which he uses to make voice memos. Her interest is professional: as a stenographer, Mina's first excited response to seeing the phonograph is to say, "Why, this beats even shorthand!"

Mina's interest in the technology is representative of her intelligence and problem solving skills -- skills that frankly surpass those of Seward. Nevertheless,...

Technology plays an important part in Dracula, and Mina, surely one of the earliest girl-geeks in literature, is fascinated by Seward's phonograph, which he uses to make voice memos. Her interest is professional: as a stenographer, Mina's first excited response to seeing the phonograph is to say, "Why, this beats even shorthand!"

Mina's interest in the technology is representative of her intelligence and problem solving skills -- skills that frankly surpass those of Seward. Nevertheless, Mina, as a woman, must be protected from the truth contained on Seward's phonograph cylinders. When Mina asks to hear the phonograph "say something," Seward immediately refuses -- first because the contents of his diary would be too shocking, and then because he realizes (somewhat sheepishly) that he has no way of finding a particular section of a recording that might correspond to a specific diary entry.

Mina however is more than up to the task. She tells Seward that

"You do not know me," I said. "When you have read those papers, my own diary and my husband's also, which I have typed, you will know me better. I have not faltered in giving every thought of my own heart in this cause. But, of course, you do not know me, yet, and I must not expect you to trust me so far."

Then she proposes to solve Seward's problem by transcribing his entire diary and typing it up on the typewriter she carries with her.

Stoker's fascination with office equipment -- imagine what he would have done with a photocopier! -- is one of the more oddball elements in Dracula. It is as if Van Helsing and his crew think they can defeat Dracula by producing superior documentation! However, if we think of the novel as a kind of proto-police procedural, it makes a certain amount of sense that Stoker would devote time to the extol the virtues of shorthand and crisp typescripts. There is also a thematic element at work -- Dracula is, after all, a story of how Western reason is able to defeat Eastern superstition. When you think about it that way, Mina's fascination with shorthand and phonographs -- and indeed, the whole narrative structure of the book, which is told through a collection of documents that could be the contents of some Dracula dossier -- makes perfect sense. Facts, presented with all the clinical precision modern technology can offer, will trump folklore any time.