Almost a year ago I tried for the umpteenth time to synthesize my many, many, many thoughts about the state of music as an issue of commerce and technology.
It's funny: the digital transforms photography and the locus of discussion is how this affects the identity of the image as a vehicle of information and an artifact of reality: the digital transforms sound reproduction and the locus of discussion is how to control the violation of copyright. Nobody talks about how the recording of sound itself has transformed, for example, music, and how digital has transformed that impression. Maybe I'm just browsing the wrong forums.
And in the final analysis I realize: I just don't know. Careening haphazardly through the history from the foil cylinder to the present moment struck me with no particular insight. I keep thinking this: It costs about a buck to make a CD. They sell them for maybe thirteen bucks. It costs about five cents to transmit the same information over the internet. How can this math not have changed everything already? And then it hits me: it isn't about the ability to control production, which in the end isn't all that hard. It is about the control of society, it is about control of the mind. And the mindshare is still overwhelmingly held by the television, to a lesser extent the periodical print media, and almost laughably the radio frequency broadcast. Some of my friends tell me this is all changing and they may be right. But in reality I find I'm not much of a futurist: I don't have a notion what effect the transformation might really have. And whatever I might opine would be pure science fiction anyway. I probably should have worked something about podcasts in there but there it is.
this is what is up with this.
No comments:
Post a Comment