Techno music is the most cutting edge fusion of art and technology there is. It takes the new onslaught of audio our ears are assaulted with every day in this industrialized society (beeps, machine whirs, airplane roars, mechanical cycles, etc.) and breathes humanity (a heartbeat) into their otherwise sterile random character. Techno and the rave culture (which, quite honestly, had the integration of art and technology down much before this academic attempt) was and is a struggle, especially for the more youthful of our nation, to integrate their daily technological experiences with the celebratory and sacred aspects of their life. This struggle was usually borne out, at night and in relative secrecy, in the very heart of the industrialized society - warehouses. There was a certain mystique to these places where I spent a many a night partying away, feeling almost as if
the sweat from our gyrating bodies was rusting away and breaking down the steel structures as fast as any websites and new economy supply chains were.
Techno allows the machines to keep the beat, while the soul roams free...
If it sounds good, it IS good.
-Duke Ellington
There is no such thing as music made in a factory. If a piece of art makes someone happy, then it is good art. If it disturbs someone, then it is good art. If it elicits a response at all, it is good art. Art is meant to enhance environments, not define them. People, personal expression, drama, and dialogue define environments. Art is meant to keep you going when "the nothing" is threatening your mind. So stop feeding the "machine" responses (to borrow your own term) and start supporting realms of music production that you enjoy - go out to techno shows/raves, buy their cds, support the musicians who make you happy. All you nerds think that you can fix everything with a gadget or technology but you forget that other non-tech people (the majority of musicians) contribute just as much to the world. They deserve your support. Techies got to the top of the world with their arrogant ideals (we are the end-all of the intelligencia) but its time for them to start sharing the load and responsibility for making everyone happy, or else just shrink back into our holes.
If you look at the internet as our collective brain, with each node representing a neuron (broad metaphor i know but go with me for second on this) then client-server is like the motor cortex - you can map out a direct link between certain neurons and a particular service of your body - the use of your left leg for example. Damage a particular part of your motor cortex, and your leg wont work. Turn off the slashdot server, and nobody will see the site. But things like memory and thought in the brain are more distributed, just like a p2p system - even if you kill off a bunch of the neurons, the system can still function and even relearn what it has lost. Even if you kill off half the gnutella nodes, you will probably retain more than half the info that was accesible on them. Since distributed processes like thought and memory are considered "higher functions" of the brain, I would state that P2P does not suck and in fact it is like a higher function of the internet (when you look at the net as an extension of our brains) and so of course it is only the intelligencia (the frontal cortex) that will find it of much use - so be it! If the rest of the world cant figure it out or doesn't want to, thats fine - more bandwidth for me!
Slashdot Mirror
Techno music is the most cutting edge fusion of art and technology there is. It takes the new onslaught of audio our ears are assaulted with every day in this industrialized society (beeps, machine whirs, airplane roars, mechanical cycles, etc.) and breathes humanity (a heartbeat) into their otherwise sterile random character. Techno and the rave culture (which, quite honestly, had the integration of art and technology down much before this academic attempt) was and is a struggle, especially for the more youthful of our nation, to integrate their daily technological experiences with the celebratory and sacred aspects of their life. This struggle was usually borne out, at night and in relative secrecy, in the very heart of the industrialized society - warehouses. There was a certain mystique to these places where I spent a many a night partying away, feeling almost as if
the sweat from our gyrating bodies was rusting away and breaking down the steel structures as fast as any websites and new economy supply chains were.
Techno allows the machines to keep the beat, while the soul roams free...
If it sounds good, it IS good. -Duke Ellington There is no such thing as music made in a factory. If a piece of art makes someone happy, then it is good art. If it disturbs someone, then it is good art. If it elicits a response at all, it is good art. Art is meant to enhance environments, not define them. People, personal expression, drama, and dialogue define environments. Art is meant to keep you going when "the nothing" is threatening your mind. So stop feeding the "machine" responses (to borrow your own term) and start supporting realms of music production that you enjoy - go out to techno shows/raves, buy their cds, support the musicians who make you happy. All you nerds think that you can fix everything with a gadget or technology but you forget that other non-tech people (the majority of musicians) contribute just as much to the world. They deserve your support. Techies got to the top of the world with their arrogant ideals (we are the end-all of the intelligencia) but its time for them to start sharing the load and responsibility for making everyone happy, or else just shrink back into our holes.
If you look at the internet as our collective brain, with each node representing a neuron (broad metaphor i know but go with me for second on this) then client-server is like the motor cortex - you can map out a direct link between certain neurons and a particular service of your body - the use of your left leg for example. Damage a particular part of your motor cortex, and your leg wont work. Turn off the slashdot server, and nobody will see the site. But things like memory and thought in the brain are more distributed, just like a p2p system - even if you kill off a bunch of the neurons, the system can still function and even relearn what it has lost. Even if you kill off half the gnutella nodes, you will probably retain more than half the info that was accesible on them. Since distributed processes like thought and memory are considered "higher functions" of the brain, I would state that P2P does not suck and in fact it is like a higher function of the internet (when you look at the net as an extension of our brains) and so of course it is only the intelligencia (the frontal cortex) that will find it of much use - so be it! If the rest of the world cant figure it out or doesn't want to, thats fine - more bandwidth for me!