Talking Shop

 

Stones at Gibson Factory, July 1975 [More]

 

When I watch music-related videos on YouTube I'm reminded of "soulcraft" and "tinkering" from not so long ago (or ancient history—2006) when Matthew Crawford wrote the Atlantis essay, Shop Class As Soulcraft which was the basis for the book released in 2009. The timing of it was interesting because those ideas were already in the air while we were going through the 2008 meltdown, and people were re-thinking everything in their lives (and still are—just the inflection point has changed). Then came HackerSpaces, MakerBot, CoolTools, rapid prototyping, the beginning of 3D Printing hype, the "garage" idea, open-source, start-ups, all driven by Obama-era attempts to innovate into a bright future. All of it rode on top of social media, with people enjoying hanging out and talking about whatever they liked.

Shop-talk is really more effective among just a few people (a "scenius") where ideas are discussed over lunch at a favorite restaurant. (Les Paul apparently loved chicken subgum, over which he shared his ideas with the Gibson luthiers). There's nothing like a shared food experience to get into shop talk, but it’s now “channelized”:  Not only are you having lunch with a person that shares your interests, but you’re also having lunch with someone with a popular YouTube channel. The intimacy of shop-talk has completely faded, in favor of making ideas immediately viral.

Shop Overload/Overshare?

I recently watched a documentary about the band Rush (Rush’s Last Hurrah) and their loyal fans. Some people have seen the band almost 200 times. Some have obsessively collected memorabilia by neatly organizing them in folders and storing them in file cabinets, and now share all of that on social media with huge numbers of followers. It reminded me of the mockumentary Skyman where Carl compulsively collected information about alien visitations, especially to prove that he had one. In social networks, it's a form of shop-talking where we can comfortably connect with a tribe with a similar interest. But in some ways, it's not far to go from talking shop to cultism. The idea of "shop" can become obsessive. It’s because we like talking as it is a form of therapy. The pandemic shifted the in-person conversation to technologically mediated spaces.

[Can we really live entirely in a Metaverse? See On the depressing fantasy of minds in simulated worlds].

How Many Friends Does One Person Need?

This was the title of a book that came out about ten years ago. I think it was this book that caused the Dunbar“150” number—that one’s social network averages around 150. Apparently part of his research was that people tend to like water-cooler talk, or simply chatting over lunch at favorite a Chinese restaurant. 

Les Paul was a living national treasure in his later years, so he commanded singular attention, but otherwise, he wasn’t always in the Gibson shop, but probably felt very at home there, where perhaps lots of people didn’t feel they were a part of it. So whatever shop talk that may have been going on there around the water cooler it wasn’t about guitars, strangely. Now people aren’t even present because they live more on placeless social networks. Dunbar’s theory included place, so I wonder how there can be an actual “shop” headspace in VR, and how long could it last?

You would think schools could be “shops”. But like the Gibson shop where workers couldn’t care less about guitars, students don’t necessarily think universities are sceniuses.

From the 2011 article: Education is as close to a secular religion as we have in the United States:

“Our colleges and universities are full to the brim with students who do not really belong there, who are unprepared for college and uninterested in breaking a mental sweat. Instead of studying, they spend time talking on the phone, planning social events, chitchatting about personal trivia and popular culture, and Facebooking.” [1]

That was over ten years ago so those sentiments have changed or have just gone out of fashion. What never goes out of fashion is the idea of close collaboration, but that idea has faded as well, mostly because collaboration isn’t that satisfying online, but I’d never turn down a chat about music on Zoom.

1. Education is as close to a secular religion as we have in the United States (dead cite). Secondary reference: https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2019/05/27/college-students-arent-even-learning-new-words/