Digital Past

When we first mentioned the topic of technology and how it has affected our attention span I was torn. Growing up in a generation that has always been surrounded by growing technology that was always changing I had a major bias. I grew up reading books. A lot of books. By the time I was in fourth grade, I had already reached a college reading level and had helped my mother write both of her graduating theses. I never really paid attention to the technology that was surrounding me. I only ever played the games that came on the computer with dial-up internet, such as, Pinball, Solitare, and Minesweeper.  With that said, my journey through making this song was long and hard.

I found myself understanding Carr’s argument and Bush’s essay more and more. After this assignment, I believe both arguments live together. It isn’t as black and white as I once thought. The DAW software is a perfect example of this. See, with all of the different sound clips to choose from I found myself jumping from one idea to another, my attention never fully staying on one plan. I must have started over 10 times because I wanted you to think it sounded cool and philosophical. Not once did I leave the software to look and work on other things. This brings me to Bush’s essay. I found that my attention was so focused on this one project because of the hidden simplicity of it all. Everything was right there. I never had to leave my house to go to the music store to find a sound clip. I didn’t have to race to my piano to get the perfect note. Because everything was in this one program, I was able to stay on task.

In the end, my song represents the journey of my experience with technology and how no matter how complicated and weird it may get, I still return to the basics of my personal upbringing with it.

Wikipedia is a newer version of what is now an age-old method of sharing information. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, the internet was originally just to share information. Even before the internet existed, the Encylopedia was a form of crowdsourcing.  Experts in their respected fields gather information and work to put them all in a single source for everyday people to use for non-fiction research. This is beneficial because it makes research time cut and we are able to find where they got their information in a timely manner. Not only that but it invokes new ideas and research to be at the forefront of the world’s mind.

I believe it is foolish to try to segregate music by sound and genre. I say this because all forms of music derive from each other one way or another. No genre is special in a sense where they only have one single sound and are completely isolated from the others. Take the song we used in class as an example.  Duke Ellington wrote a song about the watermelon man. This one piece was then used by other artists as a backtrack or beat to their songs. 

Herbie Hancock wrote a song called watermelon man as well. This is slightly more popular. Watermelon has a lot of minstrel stereotypes behind it. He worked with Mongo Santamaria conga player and that band did a cover of it giving it their own flair. Johnnie Taylor did a cover of watermelon man and added lyrics to the piece. And slowed it down and added a made it more soul by singing slower than the beat. It was played in England by Manfred Mann and sped it up, reminding me of some of The Beatles’ works. Madonna has a similar baseline in her music, as well as LL Cool J. Who owns that song? And the cultural heritage of it.  Music Travels if a song is good people with use it and incorporated it into their styles and lives. It is our job to know where it comes from and become their own historian. Find the facts but we have the obligation as a society to think about regulation.

The same goes for the Tango in Argentina and how it is used in movies such as James Bond. The use of Conga lives in many songs we hear on the radio today here in VA. How does that happen? Artists listen to each other’s work, decide they like it and then birth a piece using the traits and techniques. Thus making it silly to try to segregate sound and music into genres.

I agree that in many ways censorship is beneficial to the greater good of the community. No one wants to be watching or listening to something with their children and then suddenly be attacked with vulgarity. It just isn’t pleasant.  On the other hand, too much censorship is harmful, just look at North Korea. The fundamental difference between our countries use of censorship and NK’s censorship is that our’s is voluntary, whereas with NK it is not. I feel that as long as censorship is strictly used only to minimize vulgarity and not to oppress opposing opinions, censorship does benefit the community and should be in use.

The distribution of information and music combine many of the topics we have already talked about in class.  “Information wants be shared” and  “medium defines the message”. The fact that the internet was first created as a way to strictly share information amongst scholars, much like a digital encyclopedia only enhances that theory. Over the years the distribution of music has changed in many ways.

Music has not only gone through the evolution of sounds and genre but also the way it is presented to the consumers. Just in my lifetime, I have witnessed at least three transformations: 1. Cassettes –> 2. CD –> 3. MP3 files.  I am going to focus on the MP3 files and how they have changed. When the MP3 files first came into the realm of distribution, we would burn a CD onto our computers and then we would download them onto our MP3 players. Once Youtube became more mainstream, we could download songs from Youtube. This began the process of “stealing” music from artists because no one actually had to end up paying for the music. Whit’s book addresses this by stating that the music industry has never fully recovered from the new forms of music distribution.

Ownership can be determined through both, labor and contract. Someone who puts all of the work into a project deserves ownership. Through their ownership, they are allowed to pass the torch onto someone else.

Contractual ownership takes a few different forms in the legal system such as:

Patents: apply to inventions others cannot use it without getting permission from you and paying you a fee to use it.

Trademark: you cannot open a store and call it McDonald’s because they own the name.

Copyright: for written works. It is temporary.

and then there is another form of ownership, Corporation. These are made in order to protect the individual from legal repercussions. Since a corporation isn’t exactly a person it becomes immortal.  The question I have is any of this fair?

In a way, this is a means to keep the 1% exclusive by keeping the money within the inner circle, but on the other side of the spectrum, it makes it possible to protect the vulnerable middle class from being taken advantage of.  I believe that it only will work if it remains to be well regulated.

Popular culture is oddly integrated. Minstrel Shows are an integral part of this phenomenon. Dressing up as black people and portraying black people. Everyone who wasn’t black loved the minstrel show, even people who we see as not being racist enjoyed these shows.

Personally, I truly hate minstrel shows. They are disgustingly derogatory and thieves of African culture.  The fact that the anthem of Texas is the song, Yellow Rose, is absolutely disgraceful.  It always portrayed black people as dumb and less than intelligent human life forms and it is absolutely disgusting.

It wasn’t even just in the south, it is in the north as well in Boston. Same idea just different sheet music.

Information is pointless if it isn’t shared and that was the main reason for the internet. One could argue that advertisements on the internet could be a form of sharing information about what there is available in different stores and different times.

Google looks for the patterns in the words. It doesn’t care about the meaning. It works in different languages because it is looking for patterns and not the actual words/meanings. This is beneficial because fewer programs have to be made in order to get the same outcomes.  This only helps the argument that there is a lot of redundancy in the English language. We don’t need half of the letters that we use in the written language but because of this, we can use them to program.

There is no information or uncertainty in redundancy. The degree of the uncertainty determines the degree of information conveyed.

Information has been conveyed without any meaning whatsoever. A lot of things that we use in every day have been part of sacred traditions yet we use them without a second thought so we are using the information without the meaning.

Most of the characteristics that I believe make me unique are only relevant to those who are around me. This doesn’t change the way I am as a person it just means that I am only a daughter because of my mother. One could argue that this is an inaccurate statement because a mother who loses her child with forever be a mother. She will hold the burden and heartache of her child forever but she will never not be a mother. This is the same for my status as a daughter. When the time comes for my mother’s journey through life on Earth to end, I will still be a daughter. My mother’s life does not determine my status of being a daughter. I am an Event Technician. If I am not working an event I will still be an event technician but you could argue that I am only still an event technician because sometime in the future there will be an event for me to work at.

As for the argument that my fingerprints, DNA, etc. make me less free within the political world is completely accurate. They will always know where I am and what I am doing but I have, to an extent, accepted it.