This book was probably my favourite out of the four. I’m not entirely sure if that’s due to it’s relation to my own life(trust me, we’re gonna get into that down the line of the blog), or rather that the author, Witt, is a rather good story teller. You can tell from his tone of voice that Witt is biased towards certain perspectives of the story, and I’m rather glad he is, it gives a much more personable retelling of the events that transpire. Overall, the book is split into three perspectives. The corporate side(focusing mainly on Morris), the pirates end(focusing on Dell Glover), and lastly a misc. amount of narrative to piece the growth of technology/user interface throughout books history. I’d have to say that the start of the book was rather boring, and I can’t cite specifically when it picked up for me, but when it did, whew, I was a enamored. Again, as I did with the last book, I’m gonna pull out a series of quotes and use them to discuss my thoughts about the book.

“But for me, and those younger, collecting was effortless: the music was simply there. The only hard part was figuring out what to listen to.”(17)

So, when I was a kid, I firmly remember having a small MP3 player with some 20 songs on it. My mom showed me websites in which you could go to legally purchase music. Through this she taught me some basic components of the internet(don’t download things from just random sites), how to organize downloaded music, and budgeting(after all we were buying music so I could only choose my favourite 20 songs I could think of at the time). Anyways, I was  always proud of my little collection of songs, but eventually I got bored and wanted more. Well my mom wouldn’t let me get more so I was kind of stuck in a rut for a small while. Meanwhile, there were many kids around me who had an excess amount of music either on their own MP3 players or, better yet, iPod Nanos. The most amusing thing I can remember is that these kids were quite adamant about the fact that all of the music on their devices was pirated. Not by them of course, but by their parents, in this nuanced attempt to save money. I always remember thinking that these kids were morally inept, but that of course was long before I was exposed to the sort of operations that my mother had set up on the ‘family desktop’ that was set up downstairs.

“My assumption had been that music piracy was a crowdsourced phenomenon. That is, I believed that the mp3s I’d downloaded had been sourced from scattered uploaders around the globe and that this diffuse network of rippers was not organized in any meaningful way”(18)

So, I never assumed the same for music, but I can definitely say that I always assumed it to be the case about movie torrenting. I’m only bringing this up because I’m rather curious if the phenomenon of movie torrenting follows the same command structures that music seemed to fall under. Hopefully my admittance of torrenting movies doesn’t shine a negative light upon my face, for I don’t mean it to. I love movies even more so than I love music. I find that sometimes, films aren’t accessible to me(looking at you foreign films), and that the only way to view them is by finding illegal copies of them upon the waves of the internet. Anyways, moving on.

“Where the sales literature promised “Perfect Sound Forever,” Seitzer saw a maximalist respository of irrelevant information, most of which was ignored by the human ear. He knew that most of the data from a compact disc could be discarded-the human auditory system was already doing it.”(26)

Nothing exceptional with this quote. I just thought it was an interesting note to make regarding data compression. Especially when you think of it in terms of Claude Shannon’s form of thinking. Shannon, I believe, would find this discovery phenomenal. The average person would scoff at the mention of erasing parts of the song, but that’s not really what’s going on. Yes content is getting cut from the songs, but it’s content that wasn’t be processed to begin with.

A=music that the human ear can detect

B=detectable music

C=not detectable music

Thus, wanting to save on space, you merely subtract the unwanted variable B in order to optimize on space within the equalization between C and A.

“Adar believed that in a few years you’d be able to download music directly over the Internet and dispense with the compact disc entirely. The hitch was that audio files were large, and would have to be compressed considerably for the approach to scale.”(87)

“The music industry feared that Adar’s digital jukebox would cannibalize physical music sales, and he’d spent the last two years being told no”…”The music industry wasn’t interested in streaming. It was married tot he compact disc, in sickness and in health.”(88)

No specific comments outside that: 1. I’m glad to know that many engineers were able to predict the innovation that was coming at the turn of the century. 2. I wonder if anyone, outside of Steve Jobs, was predicting the creation of DAW software such as garage band. Furthermore, if there’s one thing that this class has taught me, it’s that the music industry is pretty damn stubborn. Interestingly, but surprisingly, Witt kind of paints them, the businesses that run the music industry, as the bad guys in this real life tale of internet piracy. Case and point, stopping technological progress in order to capitalize on your own monopolized market is pretty distasteful in my book. The compact disk apparently was a ‘all the eggs in one basket’ for this industry that was on the verge of falling upon itself with the emergence of internet popularity.

“The scorpions were the obvious choice-or perhaps Suzanne Vega-but the team worried that encoding ‘Wind of Change’ or ‘Tom’s Diner’ to mp3 format might to infringe on the artists’ copyrights.'(91)

Yah, I’m glad to know that the laws of copyright were about as confusing/not defined as they are today.

Around 95-96, Witt talks about the mp3’s first website. He mentions that it basically flopped, but he’s makes an interesting comment about Apple that I found rather ironic. He says,

“The links offered versions of the L3Enc mp3 encoder for DOS, Windows, and Linux. Apple was not included-Bernhard Grill found the company’s programming environment cumbersome and their user interface patronizing.”(95-96)

I can’t help but appreciate that Witt is including this in the historical narrative. It almost seems amusing that there once was a point in time in which Apple didn’t seem to be dominating the marketplace. I have an important question(I don’t know if you have the answer for it particularly, but I’d like to hear your thoughts). If I make music on GarageBand and then sell it, do I have to give some sort of commission to Apple or is it solely considered my property?

Around 99-100, Witt provides insight regarding the fact that Glover had purchased a CD burner. Now, I have a couple of questions that Witt doesn’t really dwelve into, and again, if you have any insight, let me know. Firstly, why aren’t burners illegal? I discussed this with my friend Rebecca, and she stated that they do have some practical use, but like, seriously, I think the risks(of obvious piracy and illegal selling) pretty much outweigh the rewards(oh boy, I copied a CD of pictures for my sister-in-law). Who pays $700 for a machine of that nature?? NOBODY(or least I hope nobody does). I mean, I can certainly remember my own mother copying over movies we got from Netlfix onto blank CDs. I’m fairly certain that we have at least four spindles worth of copied movies down in my basement. Now, while we’ve never sold them, I can’t imagine that there isn’t something a little illegal about what my family used to do. Second, are burners associated with charges? Do you have to pay a charge for each CD burned? Witt mentions that Glover apparently did this with video games, CDs, and movies back in the day around page 101. Also, fun fact, video game emulators are one of the biggest threats in the current game market, but I don’t think you could ever compare it to the problems that the music industry faced with their issues of piracy.

Mitt talks about Morris’ past attempts to deal with piracy. Witt mentions, “He had, however, learned an entirely different lesson from the tape-trading era. You didn’t solve the problem of piracy by calling the cops. You solved in by putting out Thriller.”

I was really lost in the logic here, and I don’t think Witt really followed up this example with sound explanation of how big hits somehow cut down on piracy.

“The MP3 certainly sounded better than either of those. Most listeners didn’t care about quality, and the obsession with perfect sound forever was an early indicator that the music industry didn’t understand its customers.”(132)

This sounds like an expansive view of the privatization of music. Or maybe even more so, the accessibility and freedom of choice regarding music. People were willing to sacrifice sound quality for the freedom to choose their music and have access to it wherever they went(whether they listened to it privately or in a public setting).

“To a limited extent, Morris could rely on Universal’s back catalog: the number of Led Zeppelin albums sold each year actually was a pretty good indicator of the number that would be sold in the next.”(173)

This almost seems like a precuring thought to what would later become VEVO. Repeated sales in order to keep the music industry afloat. The real question, to me, that arrives with piracy, is who is really affected by the stolen goods?? The tops dogs seem to be safe, and so do their artists, so who is really losing out??

203 describes Glover as being a sort of movie man. I actually have run into people like this before, and I definitely remember an 8 year old me buying the moving ‘Underdog’ off of a street vendor in New York about a week before the film came out in theatres.

The rest of my quotes are basic repeats of what you can see above. I’m glad to know that Kali got out, and I’m actually really surprised that I found myself rooting for the pirates in this real life story. The whole book was rather entertaining. I think the only thing I didn’t appreciate was the shifting triple narrative. It made it really hard to keep up in certain points. Sometimes the narratives weaved together really well, and then other times, I really struggled to find connections between chapters and chapters.

A really good book, I’ve been recommending it to my family and friends throughout today.

I’m fairly certain that biographies are the hardest to quote. I believe that I get to0 wrapped up in the life story of another person. That is to say that if I quote from this book for the final paper, I feel as if it might be strained quotes to say the least. Claude Shannon overall was a pretty…interesting character. Sometimes, authors Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman speak of Shannon in a very elevated sense. That is to say that they favour the genius that he was. On the other hand, I’m not sure, I got the feelings oft time that Shannon seemed to be very full of himself. I guess if I was a human computer in a time in which computers didn’t exist, I too would be a little standoffish. I sound really harsh in my critique here, and I don’t mean to be. I have Claude Shannon to thank for the very device I’m working on right now. Evidently he’s a very different man than he appears to be in the public relations video that was made so long ago.

Anyways, heres a couple of quotes that I thoughts on.

Around the 60s page mark, the authors describe several inventors and their machines. All and all it was a lead up to the project in which Shannon would work the renowned Vannevar Bush on some of the earlier computers that functioned in terms of analogue. Anyways, they say

“But it was Vannevar Bush who brought analog computing to it’s highest level, a machine for all purposes, a landmark on the way from tool to brain”(67)

This is one of the first times they mention a prelude to the discussion of what a computer essentially is, and that is a brain. There’s a lot of dialogue in the book that refers to making a computer better than a human, making it faster and more complex. They make mentions of humans being machines and that artificial intelligence and computers are naturally just an extension of what human beings can be.

For instance you have the differential analyzer, and I quote

“had solved, by brute force. equations so complex that even trying to attack them with human brainpower would have been pointless”(72)

I’m probably  gonna end up using this quote actually, as it’s literally a connection to the prowess of machines over humans. Outside of measurements, machines are able to execute things a lot better than we are in certain aspects. When you have free time, go ahead and give this video a watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1AHCaokqhg  (beware it’s a long one)

It’s an analysis video on speed running in the video game Super Mario brothers. In the video they make a lot of references to tooling, which would be me giving Mario pre-commands on how to move and act throughout a level rather than me controlling Mario with my own reflexes. The point is, that in the speed running world, it’s possible to make computer Mario run a lot faster than I ever could due to the fact that he can move into glitches which are physically impossible(or improbable) for me to make. More examples of this come into the book, especially near the end of part two when it dives into Shannon’s desire to create a computer capable of being a chess master.

I happened to be taking a logic class this semester, so Shannon’s ability to dumb content down, or simplify it, I find rather ingenious, talk about a man being able to implement philosophy so deep into modern scientific research. I just wanted to throw a quote in here for when I found it to be magnificent.

“One more beauty of this system; as soon as switches are reduced to symbols, the switches no longer matter. The system could work in any medium, from clunky switches to microscopic arrays of molecules.” (94)

I’d have to say that one of the two most interesting parts of the book were the segments regarding Shannon’s work as a war scientist, and the subsequently his creation of the Information Theory and the experimentation that he undertook during his time at Bell Labs. The whole section on war really is a staple point as to what war does in terms of technology, especially how it happens to progress to the technological initiative.  On page 179, the authors note that Shannon’s work on fire control had been ‘the most concrete up to date’.

Turing seemed like an interesting man, I wish we would’ve gotten to learn a little bit more about him class, he seems to be very prevalent in the work and world surrounding digital history, if I spot him in the subsequent books, I’ll laugh. The authors mention a quote from Shannon in an interview, he says,

“We had dreams, Turing and I used to talk about the possibility of simulating entirely the human brain, could we really get a computer which would be the equivalent of the human brain or even a lot better?” (214)

Again, lots of reference to improving the human brain. It’s a very interesting contention point especially with Carr’s arguments in mind from ‘The Shallows’. Think about the fact that you’d increase the ‘intelligence’ of a machine, meanwhile the intelligence of humans falls to weighside as the interact more and more with the technology.

I’ll be honest with you, the information theory as a whole confused the hell out of me, but I believe I got the basic gist out of it. I’d go further to explain it, but honestly I don’t think I could well enough in simple terms.

Sorry this one is shorter than the last one, but like I said, I rather struggle doing this sort of thing on biographies specifically.

SO, my plan is to make a blog post for each corresponding book that you assigned to us as I reread them in an attempt to prepare for our final project. Within each blog, I shall be posting my notes regarding what specifically I am reading. These posts may be a little less informal due to this, but again, I think you’ll appreciate the amount of thought and notes I put into each post, especially considering how they’ll affect my train of thought within the last music project.

Chapter 1:

‘Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles” (31, The Shallows)

Right after this quote, Carr mentions that he himself could be an abnormality in this way of thinking, especially in light of his less focused attention towards deep reading. I want to agree with him, but he pulls out a substantial amount of anecdotal evidence. This has lead me to wondering if perhaps I’m the normality. My saving grace, that which pulls me away from this sort of thinking, flies true in the fact that I believe there’s an empirical difference between those who grow with progressive technology versus those who are thrust into the new and expanding world. Carr’s opening chapter swings wide the door to my psyche, and I allow questions to flow out of my mind in regards to my own ability to focus. Specifically, I had a long room mate discussion on the concept of concentration in correlation with interests and non-interests. I’m not entirely sure this is an ability brought about by the internet, or merely a form of analyzation and processing that has existed since the start of time immemorial.

Further on, as he continues, I found that his numerous anecdotal stories were very counterintuitive to his primary arguments. Yes, of course the internet can affect the brain, especially the way that it processes information, but it’s in my strong belief that technological advances are merely a form of allowing a plethora of diverse research forms to emmerge. For instance, I don’t believe books will ever truly disappear, the medium in which they’re available on might, but the concept of ‘book’ is something that I believe is sort of essential to the human condition, internet and computers or not. The fact that we’ve freed ourselves from relying solely on them is sort of brilliant, but by no means are we completely expunging our souls from allowing an author to lead us through page to page.

Chapter 2:

I appreciated chapter 2 for the most part, specifically his opening where he describes how Nietzsche and his writing changed after moving over to a type-writer rather than writing out his work. I struggle to talk about anything in this chapter because to me brain plasticity has always seemingly been a common thought process, but I’m surprised that most people didn’t seemingly find that to be a case for a long while. C’est la vie, we evolve in terms of thought processes it seems like. This chapter also seems primarily to carry on the argument regarding humanities’ ability to become obsessed/molded by technology. Moving on.

Chapter 3:

Ok, this chapter was chock full of a lot more stuff than the last one, especially for someone like me who is/was taking ancient philosophy as a class right now. I’m actually fairly certain that we had the discussion regarding Plato versus Socrates in regards for the importance of reading versus memory. It’s almost reflective of the debate that we had earlier in the semester regarding ideology and realism(why do we find the sun beautiful?). Socrates is on the end of arguing that reading merely perpetuates the learning of knowledge that is only a mimic of the actual recollection, and he’s not wrong, but I find that this is kind of the same in terms of oral tradition. I find it extremely difficult to differ the two in all honesty.

I also really enjoy the debate between instrumentalism versus realism, though I find that instrumentalism kind of dominates the debate. Human kind’s basic ability to deny technology is a strong counter argument to what realism hopes to express regarding technology merely evolving past the limits of humankind. After all, if you want to take 2001: Space Odyssey as an example, the author and evidently Stanley Kubrick seemed to hold to some idea that humanity would learn to evolve past technology. And that’s an interesting concept in terms of evolution you know. I’d be hard pressed to say that animals don’t use tools, and I’d be hardpressed to say that humans don’t have the ability to think abstractly without creating ‘intellectual’ machines, aka Harriet Tubman knowing that the concept or ‘north’ is symbolized . This means that I really think that tools are merely a byproduct of human evolution, and I guess the grand debate is whether or not they hider our physical evolution or advance it? Do we evolve with tech, or do we evolve past tech? It’s something I’ve always really wondered.

One of my other big contentions with the authors claim is regarding language. I understand what he’s saying, but language in any species(if animals truly do communicate with each other in some sort of formalized language) isn’t really inherent. Separating a human from observable humans will keep him from learning how to speak until he’s introduced to other humans. Human language in itself is very abstract, I mean you’re talking about humans being able to interpret certain pitches and formations of mere molecule vibration. It’s rather incredible. There’s more stuff in the chapter, but again, I think it’s just author providing more proof for what he believes might be a causation attention being split due to the evolution of technology. It’s like a theory of mind evolution.

Chapter 4:

Ah, the infamous chapter regarding the general and private self. Now having read the entire book, I find this chapter to be especially interesting in it’s build up, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this one happened to be one of your favourites prof. I’m glad that Carr acknowledges that humans by nature are naturally scatterbrained(135), and I’m not gonna lie, I immediately thought this would ruin his entire book’s credibility, but thankfully he explains more about the true affects of books towards the brain than the internet to the brain.

Important quote to use for future use, “For most of history, the normal path of human thought was anything but linear” 136

You’ll have to forgive me, as I have a lot of highlighted quotes that I don’t entirely remember what I meant to say about each one(wow Carr, I guess you really have beaten me. But, Carr quotes this bishop Issac of Syria guy, he says

“The medieval bishop Issac of Syria described how, whenever he read to himself, ‘as in a dream, I enter a state when my sense and thoughts are concentrated. Then, when with prolonging of this silence the turmoil of memories is stilled in my heart, ceaseless waves of joy are sent me by inner thoughts, beyond expectation suddenly arising to delight my heart.’ Reading book was a meditative act, but it didn’t involve a clearing of the mind. It involved a filling, or replenishing of the mind.” (138)

Ok, my base reaction to this one was in comparison to the sorts of medium that I find around me to today. It’s very interesting to compare because I feel this way when I read a book normally. I feel this way when I lock down the mood for writing, and I especially feel this way for when I’m viewing movies(a medium that’s more important to me than the internet by far). If it was comparable to food, it’s like the internet is popcorn, it’s something to snack on, but it’s never been considerate of me to be my main source of intellectual stimulation. Poetry, books, and especially movies, are fine wine, medium rare steak, and traditional hibachi respectively. The internet is not a primary tool for actual substance, the meat of life, I receive those from other mediums. The mediums that require work and thought are my cup of tea, I’m not sure anyone receives this type of stimuli, or requires the stimuli, from the internet. Of course, I could just be very wrong about this, I’ve over assumed about my fellow man too many times to count.

Another interesting point,

“Working alone in his chambers, the Benedictine monk Guibert of Nogent had the confidence to compose unorthodox interpretations of scripture, vivid accounts of his dreams, even erotic poetry- things he would never have written had he would never have written had he been required to dictate them to a scribe.”(139)

So I originally thought of this quote as a total evidence for me to attack Socrates with this because it’s evident proof that the concepts of books and writing kind of allowed the private self to flourish and create things that would’ve probably never been made in light of the general opinion. THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT OBVIOUSLY. But, I think I’ve come to terms with the fact that Carr seems on board with the fact that books are really important, infact he jives with Plato’s mental thought processes a lot. So all I can really say here is the observation that I’m pretty sure that humanity has not entirely done the opposite. Farther on in the book, Carr mentions how the internet has brought humanity back to the forefront of generality, as almost everything of worth seems to need to be shared(the whole class concept of information needs to be free), but I think it’s a little more complex than that. I find that people throughout history want a sense of satisfaction or a desire to feel like they belong. The internet, it seems, allows for all sorts of people to not hide their privatization, but to share it in smaller communal online groups that hold similar desires and interests. Theres no fear from the public as whole, because the internet allows like minded individuals to find each other. SO does that make their content and information private or public? I’m not sure, theres a lot more philosophy to the internet than I had presumed before.

Another important aspect for this entire chapter is that there are several points in which the discussion of books is relevant to information being free for people to share and discuss ideas. It’s a very strange mix between the private and general self.

A really big point of contention for me, aka I hate this quote would be,

“We cannot go back to the lost oral world, any more than we can turn the clock back to a time before the clock existed. ‘Writing and print and the computer,’ writes Walter Ong, ‘are all ways of technologizing the word’ and once technologized, the word cannot be de-technologized.’

I have to rather disagree with Carr’s strain of logic here. I think it’s kind of ludicrous that we lack the ability to regress as a collective human species. It’s incredibly possible, as we’ve already discussed the fact that general mindsets (private vs general) have a strong ability of regressing upon itself.

One final note, I was watching a movie earlier, and I had the sudden realization that Socrates ironically wasn’t afraid of books, but the internet itself. As we’ll see later on, Carr argues that books strengthen memory whilst the internet utterly seems to destroy it. Safe to say, Socrates was far ahead of his time.

Chapter 6:

I appreciated the latter of this chapter, but, as my room mates could attest to my 3 AM ranting, I utterly hated the start in words of the comparison between the benefits of a laptop versus a book(check out pages 201-205). It actually made me think a lot about our current music project that we’re working on, especially when you think about the advantages of being able to carry a full music studio around with you wherever you go. I kind of believe a laptop actually follows all the same conditions of a book outside of the battery dying, but I mean, if I’m at a beach, I feel like I shouldn’t be reading over the duration of like, 2 hours(the amount of time it would probably take for my laptop to die).

Another interesting contradiction, to quote,

“When a printed book-whether a recently published scholarly history or a two-hundred year-old Victorian novel-is transferred to an electronic device connected to the Internet, it turns into something very like a Web site. its words become wrapped in all the distractions of the networked computer. Its links and other digital enhancements propel the reader hither and yon.”(210)

I’m not sure this is true. I literally read Carr’s book on my phone, and I’d say I was able to ‘deep read’ the book and be able to actually to implement it’s content into not only this blog, but also my planned thoughts in the upcoming paper. I find that the ‘links and digital enhancements’ that he refers to, could certainly be synonymous with natural sounds. If I was reading in the year 1770 out in the forest, whose to say I wouldn’t get frightened by a bee flying around my ears. That stretches the attention about as much as me checking apps or hyper links or what not.

Carr brings up an interesting point about reading and writing(or the privatization-relationship between writers and readers) and I think it could be an interesting topic point regarding the displacement of music in favour of technology. He says,

“But the cost will be a further weakening, if not a final severing, of the intimate intellectual attachment between the lone writer and the lone reader.”(217)

This also brings into the question of privatization versus general viewing as a whole experience, but again, I shall discuss this later in the paper.

Around 220, he discusses people of the past making the basic prediction of audio books, it’s incredibly interesting, but I also think it makes a larger case to say that we sometimes overestimate the dangers of current technologies, but again, I seem to be very adamant about defending the concepts of the internet and new computer technology. Again, I’ll bring up this case as he continues to mention how various mediums have all been a threat to the idea of a book itself. And similarly to memory, you have such things as the song ‘Video killed the Radio Star’. I think Carr overvalues the power of old ideas over the current medium. Hell, if you want to, you can consider the comeback of vinyl records as a cultural phenomenon in accordance to what I’m referring to. I need to reiterate the fact that I firmly believe the mind can stretch in ways that are parallel. To say that I can’t learn both deep focus and customary focus(that is to say in accordance with the internet) is lightly absurd.

Chapter 7:

‘Try reading a book while doing a crossword puzzle, that’s the intellectual environment of the internet.” Yes and no, it’s the same thing as texting and driving. Yes, it’s inherent that you can’t do both safely, but I mean, just because I have my phone in my pocket doesn’t mean I’m gonna instinctively pull out my phone and text just to text. Just because the option is there, doesn’t mean I’m going to partake in it. Same goes with the copious amounts of stimuli that accompanies anything that you’re partaking in within the internet.

This chapter in general is mostly about the mind’s ability to not concentrate, specifically why it can’t concentrate. It’s mostly self explanatory, and if I really struggle to concentrate throughout my project, I’ll be sure to cite the many experiments and people cites as proof in this chapter.

Chapter 8:

This chapter should’ve been named the cult of google.

If there’s one thing that scares me, it’s the corporate control of the free space of living that is the internet. It’s not the European Union(looking at you Article 13), it’s companies like Google that claim to be wanting free information for everyone. Especially, when we decide to give companies like Google all of the power.  It’s a fearful thought to know that there are a plethoric scale of people internationally who don’t have a full comprehension of the Internet. I mean, I don’t mean to preach about the Deep Web, but it is a thing. It’s a dangerous thing, but so was the wild west. My point in this small rant is that I have a lot of trouble giving all of the power to one company in allowing what things are to remain prevalent versus what things need to be hidden. I sound like a serious conspiracy theorist, but it is something that’s I’m incredibly terrified of. The spread of information in a free environment is threatened by large companies who seem to control how people are drifted towards information.

Oh an interesting observation that this chapter made was actually connected to media output and the actual quality of media output. He says, “These companies are dedicated to providing their millions of members with a never-ending ‘stream’ of ‘real-time updates,’ brief messages about, as a Twitter slogan puts it, ‘what’s happening right now.'”(308)

This is actually a pretty correlated effect of how I’d argue that a lot of people would say that media has seriously gone down the drain over the past x amount of years. Mediums focused way too much on just getting as much content out as possible rather than worry about the actual quality of said content. I know that Hollywood has seriously run into this problem in the 2000s. Theres defiantly an argument here that the two factors of internet and bad content as relative clauses.

Chapter 9:

Two really touching comments about this last one,  one I really like and the other one kind of makes me mad.

“What makes us most human, Weizenbaum had come to believe, is what is least computable about us- the connection between our mind and our body, the experiences that shape our memory and our thinking, our capacity for emotion and empathy.”(398)

This is one of the more well worded ways to describe humanity, and I really appreciate it. On the other hand, Carr describes the life of the guy who wrote Sleepy Hollow, and how about he describes his experience in nature vs when it’s ruined by the progressive technology of man. Anyways, Carr makes this observation,

“There is no Sleepy Hollow on the internet, no peaceful spot where contemplativeness can work its restorative magic.”(421) I don’t agree with this. I think that people can get into the zone on the internet when they have a set mindset. It’s all about focus focus focus.

Not gonna lie, Carr kind of gets on my nerves, but that’s probably because I’m the targeted demographic. I’m very curious what it must be like for someone else older to read this book in general response. I’ve very sorry that this blog post in itself was about the same size as a small paper, pray tell I hope the next three are not the same.

So, much like the other day, my family had a very in depth and heavy conversation/debate regarding the topic of conspiracies. I’m a well-known conspiracy theorist in my family, I mean, what can I say, I like to stir the pot. That being said, I seriously have a problem with the apparent relation between Disney and the American copyright law that exists for intellectual and artistic property. I’m talking about Mickey Mouse of course and the fact that his imaging should’ve been released to the public a long time ago.

I find a lot of issues with the ideas of corporate businesses. It’s one thing to give ownership to someone that is alive, but to remove objects and ideas from the realm of cultural identity is nothing less of absurd. When we discussed the fact that the song ‘Happy Birthday’ was once actually considered under copyright law, I was astounded. To me, personally, the song seems like such an integral part of modern, western culture, that I find it would be absolutely absurd that anyone would own rights to it. The further possibility that it’s possible I’d be charged for my kids singing the song at a birthday party is equally absurd. I absolutely fear the future where the government is spying on us to that extent for the sake of corporations making money under the guise of copyright.

I come from a background of having a lot of experience within the YouTube community. I know that within that community, there’s been problems with copyright for years. Especially the determination between what constitutes and what doesn’t constitute ‘Fair Use’. One of my biggest questions that I didn’t get to ask in class was, ‘Do songs have protection under fair use?’ I mean, if it does, then I don’t think people are protecting themselves well enough from law suits, but if it doesn’t, that’s very, very wrong. Especially considering the diverse, historic nature that seems to follow hip-hop and record/dj mixing. I had no idea that, again, the racial divide that plagues the music industry didn’t really stop back in the 50s like I thought it did. I’m glad that people from poorer background found a relatively cheap way of expressing themselves, but I’m kind of pissed that overarching, governmental authorities would try to shut it down.

I always say that copyright truly is a mixed bag of good and bad. I lean more towards bad, but at the same time, it’s evident to me that obviously it would be wrong for me to be able to just cut off the last two seconds of a song and then just sell it as my own. On the other completely flipped side, people getting sued over really, and I mean really, small matters and a song need to grow up. People trying to own things to that matter and extreme is a form of greed that I can’t support in the slightest. I find that in the past, in the primary time of classical music, people used to find it an honor to have their music featured in another person’s music. It’s evident that the times have changed, and I find it change that makes me sad. Art is made for the sake of human emotion and the epiphany of the features that make us human. I guess it’s evident that our desire to own and subjugate intellectual property is in association with our natural features.

In future reference, I hope to have another blog post towards the idea of crowdsourcing. furthermore, two more on the last two books we’ve had assigned for class, and lastly, a series of blog posts related to my creation of mine own song…I look forward to discussing sampling in my future paper.

PS. All of my text seems to be blacked out on my blog, if you go ahead and highlight over it, you will have the availability to see the words, I’m sorry this has happened, if you need me to send you the specific blog post, let me know.

FYI, I worked on this with Rebecca McLaughlin, so apologies if ours seem similar.

First and foremost, Google’s Ngram Viewer is kind of useless when it comes to the word Disco. This is mostly due to the fact disco is apparently counts as a prefix, so the use of the ‘word’ can be traced easily back to the 1800s in words such as ‘discomfort’ and a bunch of other French sounding words that aren’t really used that often in the modern age(silly French people(hopefully that wasn’t offensive)).

A quick search for the history revealed a very general explanation(thanks Wikipedia) in the fact that Disco arrives from the word discotheque, another word frequently used to describe certain styles of nightclub. When plugged into Google’s Ngram, the results were a lot more helpful, and revealed the term starting gaining substantial use in the 50s, and has steadily increased up to today. The real question in my search, is to find around what time period that Discotheque(as in the nightclub) started being more popularly used to describe music along with being shortened to the term disco.

By EARL C GOTTSCHALK JR Staff Reporter of THE WALL,STREET JOURNAL. (1979, Oct 22). Disco-music craze seems to be fading; record makers glad. Wall Street Journal (1923 – Current File) Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/134362064?accountid=14541

In the above source, Earl seems to make a pretty strong case about the fading nature of Disco. At the end of the 1970s, this isn’t entirely surprising, and it’s pretty accurate as Wikipedia brings up the point that true to it, Disco in mass didn’t really thrive in the 80s. With this information we can put a relative end date to the fanaticism of disco fever. Again, the real challenge is nailing down when it might have began outside of its prefixed nature.

Savoy, M. (1968, Jun 25). Socialites take disco spin at newly opened club john. Los Angeles Times (1923-1995) Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/155981787?accountid=14541

This Newspaper provides another addition to the term Discotheque, and to be fair it describes the type of club that would play disco music. To quote: “Postage stamp floors, loud music, and jammed tables”. As far as I know, this seems to be the earliest accurate form of reporting on ‘disco music’ that the database, ProQuest, seems to provide.

Whew talked about a class with a strained discussion piece. Strained not in it’s relevance, but in its contents related and derived from the Civil War. I thought that overall the discussion of the Civil War was interesting, but it lead to a sort of static to cover the main point of Authoritarianism in information. Now that I’m writing this all down I feel like it actually brings up an excellent point to the problems that come with free information without authority. No one is truly a master of knowledge. Yes, through a collection of primary sources and formative arguments you can present an idea of history, but no one has an absolute vision of every single fact that makes up an event. AKA the Civil War, I can’t fairly say was just start by the factor of a mass group of people standing up for the right of slavery. That’s my opinion, another opinion can easily lean the other way, but I don’t think either one could outright be seen as the truth(and that’s where constructive argumentation comes in). I promise I’m leading up to a point here. Pre-internet, Textbooks, and subsequently any source of info that claims to be an assortment of fact for the past history, all technically used this argumentized style in order to express their version of history.  Now often time they’d use a sort of tone that doesn’t lead the reader to question what they’re reading, and I think their natural ignorance in questioning is expected in this day of mass info. People have to be trained to question things, books pre-internet should’ve been questioned about as much as an article that I read today on Facebook. Sources as well, need to be looked at, where are they coming from, when, are they biased, can they truly be trusted, how integral is the argument and logic of said information or article.

My overall point is that everything should be questioned, from sources on the internet, to the books and articles that we find to be authoritative. History without absolute proof is sketchy at best.

Outside of this general discussion I found it very interesting on the questions of War Romanticism. I’d have to say the main causation that leads to a spike in War effort is the sense of homeland. Afterall, the events of Pearl Harbor bolstered the U.S. populace ten-fold. As for the propagandized imagining of African-Americans in the Civil War, I have sparce words. The motives are confusing at best, as both governments themselves seemed rather confused as to what to do in regards to the idea of emancipation and conscription. So I’m not really sure what the story might have been for their involvement in the conflict, especially in the south.

The Remainder of September mostly seemed to focus on the finalization of the Cold War. Along with this we seemed to talk quite a bit on Claude Shannon and his influence on the modern, technological world that we find ourselves in today.  I’m glad that we spent a portion of time to discuss Claude Shannon, as I feel that American History classes in High School don’t cover this rather important historical figure. Furthermore we had a rather long discussion on the early processes of computing and the internet. This is the first time in class that it truly felt like the title ‘A digital past’, so I’d definitely make the argument that it’s indeed one of the most important topics we’ve held in this class so far. Thank you for providing your own account for what it was like to have an early computer, it sounded really similar to my Mum’s experience in the 80s.

Now I’, a big fan of American history. Having a chance to dive into the history of American music was/has been a pretty interesting experience, as I’ve been learning things that I never have been able to before. For instance, your points on how recorded media has the potential to erase the culture and meaning out of either a song or instrument is powerful, and I’m rather glad that a portion of wool has been removed from mine eyes. As I said, I’m a poet, and I can’t stand the idea of ‘Blackout poetry’ because it’s basically the same thing. I’ll post examples at the end for what terrible work can be created at the expense of someone else’s hard earned pages. Outside of this, I never knew that race and music had such a divide throughout the history of America. For instance, having a background in acting, I always knew about black face, but I never knew it was, in itself, a literal genre that focused outside of simply performing as someone who is black. The concept of a Minstrel Show was extremely new to me, and the branches that have spread across the musical landscape are astounding. For instance, I was very caught off guard the amount of country songs that are directly just ripped off from mistral songs. I had no problems with this portion of the class, and I felt that it opened up quite a bit of discussion.

I want to apologize for forcing three dates into one blog, but, besides the fact that I was just off schedule for writing these blogs, I feel as if these last three classes were good to go together.

9/10

So, this whole class period was basically a review/discussion on the book The Shallows. I’m not sure what students are complaining about the readings, but I’d rather read books such as these then the alternative of textbooks that drone on and on about digital media. So, thank you for choosing interesting reading material. I found it most interesting in the fact that I believe it provides a unique example of what I believe to be is the miscommunication with the youth and the last generation. Throughout the book I spotted examples that set me and the author in worlds apart. I won’t go into full detail, because I’ve got a blog to right, but I can tell you the major difference that I noticed. Theres a distinct difference between the generation that has grown up with this super-fast, interconnected technology versus the people who were grown up with it. That’s my opinion, and as much as I support it, it’s hard to support because making assumptions over a mass group of people is neigh impossible. If you want to have a further discussion on this, feel free to e-mail me @estickle@masonlive.gmu.edu.

9/12

This class discussion was really, really cool. I’m a philosophy major, so the discussion of realism versus idealism is a famous debate that I’ve witnessed before. The Plato versus the Aristotle. I personally see myself as more of an idealist, but not a religious one. To me, people have an innate reasoning for things they like. Call it a preference of the soul, or the chemicals in your brain, I’m pretty sure everyone has it. When García López de Cárdenas, discovered the Grand Canyon, I’m pretty sure he was caught off by the pure beauty of it, and I don’t think he really had anything to compare it to. That’s a small argument, and again if you wish to discuss it further, please e-mail me above.

I appreciated having this discussion, but I wish it had been more intertwined with the idea of what makes music good or bad, but this could sadly be the fact that our class isn’t the most talkative.

9/17

This was a cool reteaching of the Cold War, I had no idea that the technology built during this era for military defense had such a huge impact on our modern-day technology. This lesson seemed pretty essential for a class called ‘the Digital Past’. I can’t say I had much thought on the matter outside of that.

Well honestly I think I can say that A. my professor has revealed himself to be Irish(I feel like a moron for missing his name during the first class) and B. That apparently my generations taste for music has been highly impoverished due to the fact that we’ve compressed it to a felt-like non-existence. While this compression includes data compression, it also refers to dynamic compression, something that I was aware of, but didn’t really know the extent of until a few days ago. I was kind of dismayed to scroll through my various songs on iTunes and find that the sound quality doesn’t really change. I can fully say that I prefer dynamic music as opposed to compressed music, but asides going to a concert(which I also had my mind blown at the reveal that live music can be compressed).

I rather enjoyed the counter example of Frank Sinatra who I think is a pressing point as to why sound manipulation is important to the music medium. I’m pissed off rather at the fact that music producers/company have continued to sell me crap throughout my life.

This class in general continues to astound me, for it’s not what I expected in any sense or regard, but I’ll take it, as I’ve been given the chance to open my mind and think. After all, when you brought up the point about the two selves, the private and the public, I was blown back. Thank you for the metaphorical opening of the gates.

This course will explore the history of American music and music technology, focusing especially on digital technology as it developed after WWII.

When I first heard this description of the class, at the start of the class of course, I of course took it as a joke, for that’s what I legitimately thought it was.  I’m not sure much can go into this first blog, as the class was only thirty minutes. However, I can certainly say that I’m rather excited for the exploration of this class. It seems rather engaging, and I hope that I’m not the only one to think that, but I guess my classmates thoughts and comments shall be revealed the  more we go into the semester.