The Death of Music (cont.)
New York Times columnist David Brooks made an interesting and salient point about the fragmentation of current pop culture: As old ways of listening to music meld into new ways, culture loses it long-term memory.
The oral tradition gave way to printed scores, which gave way to TV and radio, and radio to the Internet. In the radio days, there were finite options for listening to music. Radio stations had limited playlists that everyone listened to. Now everyone has their own radio station and playlists that typically never get shared with anyone else.
In the past few years social networking has closed this gap somewhat, but the glut of social networking sites has further balkanized the listening public into more and more groups with fewer participants. Imagine a radio dial with 5,000,000 stations!
On social networking: As preferences become more attached to our on-line profiles, music has become more of a pull technology, rather than being pushed out by DJs. We are becoming more 'magnetized' to media, i.e. it gets pulled in by the magnetic field of our preferences and metadata residing in our profiles.
Medical imaging technology has become more sophisticated in the past few years. Dyes can be injected into genes, and are visible under certain types of light. The analogy with preferences is that preference is the dye and media is the light which makes it react or glow.
So what does this mean for the demise of music? It takes away the discovery of something on our own volition. Our personal robots are working on our behalf, but if we start eating oatmeal on Tuesday mornings your robot is wont to making it for you on Tuesdays whether you wanted or not: "Oatmeal again!!" And with music: "U2 again!" In effect the robot is no different than the DJ.
The solution: Personal robots that are not at our behest, but robots that have a balance of DJ and a smart iPod playlist that gets shared with a wide network of people. But when you think about it, this is what radio once was.
The oral tradition gave way to printed scores, which gave way to TV and radio, and radio to the Internet. In the radio days, there were finite options for listening to music. Radio stations had limited playlists that everyone listened to. Now everyone has their own radio station and playlists that typically never get shared with anyone else.
In the past few years social networking has closed this gap somewhat, but the glut of social networking sites has further balkanized the listening public into more and more groups with fewer participants. Imagine a radio dial with 5,000,000 stations!
On social networking: As preferences become more attached to our on-line profiles, music has become more of a pull technology, rather than being pushed out by DJs. We are becoming more 'magnetized' to media, i.e. it gets pulled in by the magnetic field of our preferences and metadata residing in our profiles.
Medical imaging technology has become more sophisticated in the past few years. Dyes can be injected into genes, and are visible under certain types of light. The analogy with preferences is that preference is the dye and media is the light which makes it react or glow.
So what does this mean for the demise of music? It takes away the discovery of something on our own volition. Our personal robots are working on our behalf, but if we start eating oatmeal on Tuesday mornings your robot is wont to making it for you on Tuesdays whether you wanted or not: "Oatmeal again!!" And with music: "U2 again!" In effect the robot is no different than the DJ.
The solution: Personal robots that are not at our behest, but robots that have a balance of DJ and a smart iPod playlist that gets shared with a wide network of people. But when you think about it, this is what radio once was.
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