May
14
“De-Skilling”
May 14, 2018 | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
One of the major topics discussed today was the idea of de-skilling. When factories used machines to make shoes, the machine de-skilled the shoe maker. De-skilling can be seen in the creation of pop music today. It’s so easy to fix the vocals of singers. As long as a you’re pretty/handsome and the record label can market you, then who needs to be a skillful singer? No one. Talent has become an afterthought. The need of skill has shifted from the singer to the producer. In the past, consumers were more aware of who made a product. Nowadays everything just says made in China. Products were seen not only as an object of utility but also as a product of human labor. Industrial production has severed the connection between objects and labor. Gifts hold more value when hand-made but these I can’t say how many gift-cards I receive as presents. I personally don’t know the person that has made every piece of clothing or shoe I own. I do however have cultural outfits where I know woman who created the pieces for me. Those cultural pieces hold special value to me. Mass production has rendered labor irrelevant. The form labor that comes to mind where skill is still relevant are landscapers. But soon there may be a robot doing our gardening for us. By the ease of a voice command, “Hey Siri” or “Hey Alexa”, simple labor tasks are too being rendered irrelevant. Cheap products are nice but they are also destabilizing. Carl Marx argued that de-skilling is a crisis because objects have lost their original meaning. Now, commodity fetishism is an issue. Objects contain magical powers. Society is all about commodity fetishism as brand names are viewed as better than the store brand.
To be a politician in the acoustic era, one needed to be loud to speak effectively. The microphone changed that. Roosevelt takes advantage of the radio. During his fireside chats, he spoke as if it were a conversation. Speaking in an intimate style allowed him to create a close relationship with citizens. He adapted his voice to the space of a person’s home when previously it was in a public space. Technology altering political discourse can also be seen when debates became televised. Politicians must not only focus on what they are saying, but also how and what they are wearing while they speak. Making a mistake in body language and dress can steer the conversation away from policy to appearance.
May
13
Ownership
May 13, 2018 | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Hamilton wanted the US to be a diverse industrial nation. Freedom was realized in prosperity and individual diversity, not in land ownership. Human self is best realized when people compete against themselves to find what they are best at. If everyone is a farmer then nobody is doing their best. Actually because of competition we are in the situations we are today. We have countries providing weapons to start a coup to destroy and overthrow regimes. We do this because the competition is a threat and the authoritarians running these regimes can’t be controlled. The violence and disadvantage felt by many countries and people in the world is due to competing not as a farmer but as something else. Volatility in present day landscape is all because of competition. It has bred greed and corruption. It has elevated a class that feels they it has the right to play with people’s livelihood.
Jefferson believed that for the nation to survive there had to be a high degree of uniformity. What we call “diversity” was a danger. Government should be weak and minimal. Government has more control than we care to admit but not because they hold any specific views. It is the power of the outside forces that control the politicians that have the voting power. In the end, it is the need for new diversity why we have lobbyists that have specific politicians in their corner. These groups have identified that the government is weak and can be bought if enticed properly. We still see diversity as a danger and this is precisely why laws on guns and drugs can’t get passed. It is why we can’t have universal healthcare because we see it as socialist and god forbid we try new ideas which in and of themselves are diverse. Jefferson asks where is the community if everyone is competing against one another? There is a community but the community is just hidden.
Technology is corroding the capacity to be in a nation. Technology undermines mutuality. What’s more important about you? The fact that you are American or your lifestyle choices. People corrodes the capacity to be in a nation. People undermine mutuality. Technology is a tool and we need to stop blaming it for our inefficiencies. We control the technology so in a way we are the ones undermining our mutuality. Let’s be real no one cares you’re American, they care about who you are and what you do. That is what matters. People are interested in people not their citizenship. It devolves into who you are and what you bring to the table. Your associations are more valuable than citizenship in my opinion.
Things that individualize us are often instruments of state surveillance and control (DNA, retina scan, Fingerprints). Is that a plausible conclusion? State surveillance seems a bit cynical. We believe in these measures because we are taught to believe that the uniqueness of it offers us protection of our privacy. The state controls it but so do we. State control of us can happen more beyond the DNA, retina scan and fingerprints. The conclusion that surveillance is done by those means is narrow minded. We can change someone’s quality of life in a matter of strokes that involve zeroes and ones. We can surveil someone through that than pinning them with fingerprints and DNA. Those are cherry toppings but an indefinite use of surveillance.
May
13
Copyright
May 13, 2018 | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Crowdsourcing is the idea that you get a better result from a large population than with just two experts. Ideas are improved and are better when ideas are freely expressed. I believe that ideas can be greatly improved. However, how can we truly fact check the ideas. Real time editing and contribution of ideas makes it hard to discern the truth from the lies. Think about how tweets are retweeted and shared and discussed at the tap of a button. Yet, we don’t do enough digging to see how credible the source is or who controls the information. Then the information is shared people become misinformed and then riots start and organizations create rallies of false information. Crowdsourcing has its benefits but then it also has some consequences.
John Locke says you acquire ownership when you mix you labor with the earth. If you have a lot of land and you’re not doing anything with it and someone does something it, do they acquire ownership by mixing their labor with the earth? What’s your moral claim to ownership? It seems that Locke is making the claim that once one invests time to labor on a specific piece of “land” then the ownership belongs to them. Yet, that logic can be met with so many objections. If his reasoning holds up then employees of Goldman Sachs and Northrop Grumman who bring their intellect to labor on the “land” then hold more ownership in those companies than what is given to them. Essentially the employees own more than the CEO and the COO. They don’t labor the land like everyone else, does they negotiate it. They are mixing their labor but fair use and rights then are tricky because the amount of labor is not equal to everyone. We aren’t exactly a moral society and people don’t even get fair access to stocks or benefits given by these companies.
Copyright should not be extended. If copyright is constantly extended, it prevents the general public from having full access to the older works and, therefore, thriving and substantially impacting society as a whole. Similar to learning from previous mistakes in history, having access to the older works allows the public to study them and possibly create better works that surpass the older works that currently exists and mold them into something that benefits the current structure of society as it exists today.
So imagine I build a house, and then I die and the house is sold to you. Should there be a limit on how long you could own it, after which it would be in the public domain? There shouldn’t be a limit because intellectual property differs from physical property. Intellectual property has the chance to impact society to a more significant degree than physical property could. Intellectual property is intangible, an idea that is conceived in the mind. Despite the fact that ideas can be reduced to a “physical state” and thus become subjected to copyright laws, the original concepts are still intellectual. In contrast, physical property just exists. Physical property can be discovered or acted upon in order to obtain ownership, but you don’t have to conceive of physical property unlike with intellectual property. Owning the physical property does not automatically entitle the person to ownership of all of the intellectual property rights. When the house is sold, the person is receiving ownership of the physical property (the house). That still potentially leaves the intellectual property of the house to be negotiated for.
May
13
How Music Got Free
May 13, 2018 | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
How Music Got Free by Stephen Witt is by far my favorite of all the books assigned. I found Glover’s story very interesting. His story was told in an out of chapters, but I kept reading because I wanted to know the end result. It was also interesting to read about the Fraunhofer team’s struggle to make the mp3 successful. I was so surprised to learn how long it took for the mp3 to be adopted. However, I am not surprised that the struggle was heavily due to “politics- a hateful state of affairs in which personal relationships and business considerations trumped raw scientific data” (21). The mp3 had superior quality but the mp2 had branding in place. In a past lecture, we discussed how everything in society is laced with politics. All that I’ve known in my lifetime is the mp3. In fact, as a child on of the things I begged my parents for was an mp3 player after I had my CD player for a couple of years.The whole science from Huffman coding to algorithms behind the creation of the mp3 was not the captivating part of the book in my opinion. Lyndell Glover and James Dockery were two men that worked at the PolyGram compact disc manufacturing plant in North Carolina. Witt talks about both men at first but then the main attention goes to Glover. Glover doesn’t have a college degree but from the damage he caused to the music industry he is an intelligent man. “He didn’t budget or keep records, but tracked his cash flows with a mental ledger” (65). Glover was very good with fixing things and was very interested in technology. Glover managed to create a whole system that allowed him to leak CDs out of the plant undetected. The story of Doug Morris was also fascinating. Even with the falls of the music industry, he always seemed to come out on top. He had the secret key that others didn’t, the order-taker. Glover gets into piracy specifically the RNS group. Although the different stories were connected, I did not like how Witt would talk about Glover/piracy then jump to Brandenburg/mp3 and then move to Morris/the music industry. Witt depicts the work of piracy groups and how they affected the music industry. I was happy when Glover decided to walk away because I anticipated him getting caught. I was disappointed that he could not stay away from the thrill of it all. I was also angry that Kali aka Cassim walked away untouched even though he was the leader of the group. In sum, Witt was able to exemplify so many things we discussed in lecture from Bush’s information wants to be free and to Stallman encouraging crowdsourcing.
May
13
The Novice in the Archives/Internet History
May 13, 2018 | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Today we discussed how museum gives the message that history must preserved from my contaminating touch. You posed the question of which Wright brothers’ airplane should be preserved. I would hope that history would preserve both. To make an assumption that the human mind cannot discern what history is or isn’t is presumptuous. I think in the current climate of “ Fake News” and Cambridge Analytica it’s hard to tell where the truth in history really lies. However, I believe that history consumed by Americans is one that is done with gullibility. The Plane that was crashed provides valuable insight into materials used and allows for speculation of thought that led to the final creation of where it was successful. There is a lot of worth in the idea of something as there is in the product of the idea.
A history textbook sends the message that history belongs to someone else and that person is anonymous to you. History and the preservation of it is not what it used to be. Information and ideas flow through platforms that don’t only include the textbook. I believe the textbook is an archaic form of learning but still does hold some value. Why you may ask? Well, I think the demands of education require learners and people to know more than just the cookie cutter response to things. It is why primary sources and secondary sources are part of the learning to support and contradict the view of history that has been disseminated through a textbook. The citizen is responsible for asking the questions not designed for passive consumption. History of the past was that of passive consumption. Take for example how states in the south receive funding from oil companies to print texts that deny the effects of global warming as well as the effects drilling can have on an ecosystem and the environment as a whole. I will say though that something should be said for trusted and reliable sources because not all information can be taken for utmost veracity. My history does belong to me, it is not anonymous and if it is then something should be said for inquiring minds that exist today.
We discussed the example of the train in the Smithsonian museum. I think there is a select group of people who do take history apart intellectually. Yet, they are so few and far between. Our pace of life and demands of it sets the tone for how we intellectually engage in history. As a society and as a human race we have gotten really lazy with the questioning. The times of the Black Panther Party, Malcolm X and Protests of crises around the world demanded answers that the government needed to provide. We slipped into a redacted lull and government knows best complacency that leaves us unaware and unencumbered. History not belonging to us is our fault. We chose to be blind, numb and dumb to lack of information and misinformation. We had no desire to truly know and as such the message that was given was one that we as people unintentionally asked for. There is a need to have everything wrapped in a neat little bow. But information changes based on demand and pressure and until we apply the pressure and demand for better, our desires will continue to corrupt the timeline of history.
We also discussed the example of Japanese internment camp exhibit. The president of the museum’s take on the exhibit was “If we made it as bad as it actually was people would dismiss it as propaganda so we made it nicer than it actually was so people would accept it.” Museums are for entertainment. People go to be entertained. The history has to be appealing and draw people in, if not, they will not get the audience to remain open. They are gimmicks that attempt to show history and commemoralize it in a way that warrants frequent return trips. So in the end, the meaning of an object has to come from you and not what they want you to get from it.
May
13
Sound
May 13, 2018 | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
We started off the class jamming. I really loved the music you played by James Brown. However, there is no reason for Make it Funky to be 12 minutes long since he was not doing a lot of melodic singing. Brown isn’t saying anything of substance. Brown’s music is filled with strong rhythmic beats. The rhythm of the 1 is the emphasis on the first beat. A key characteristic of the funk genre is “the one.” The emphasis of the 1 consistently grabbed my attention in every song. Modern music uses less and less chords which can be traced to Afro-Cuban music. I then moved from being in a lecture about the digital past to getting a lesson in physics. I learned about sound being pressure waves traveling through the air. The pitch of a note is determined by its frequency. The higher the pitch, the faster the sound wave is oscillating. I’ve always been fascinated by the various sounds different instruments can make. Every instrument has notes that they produce call overtones. Apparently, different instruments sound different because they have different overtone series. There is a fundamental middle note that is used to make sure they are playing the same note. I’m guessing this is how different instruments are in tune with each other. Another interesting fact I learned today was that if you pluck a guitar string half way, it divides into a note an octave higher. With each successive division, the octave gets higher and higher. Is this like going up a scale on a piano? One of the most confusing parts of lecture today was the idea that architecture could be considered frozen music. I don’t understand how harmonic ratios relate to room shape.
May
13
Sampling
May 13, 2018 | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
This lecture was on the history of sampling. Music is less original than we think. There are two kinds of compression. Data compression is making a file smaller. Dynamic range compression is making it louder overall with less variation between the loud and quiet parts. Sampling means grabbing small piece of audio and replaying it somewhere else. The first example of sampling was the mellotron which is a keyboard with a bunch of tape loops on the back. Loops of tape were triggered by keys. The instrument seems really complicated to me. In the 70’s and 80’s, a form of sampling develops using records. You could repurpose records and make them into something new. All music today is based on sampling. Every song I hear, I can always find traces of another song. By the late 1980s, “digital samplers” had become affordable. It had built-in drum sounds, and could record a short patter. But you could also record other things and then manipulate temp and pitch. Watching the man mess with different samples was intriguing. I was amazed at how fast he could put it all together. I felt like I was watching someone play a video-game. I am excited to try to use GarageBand to create a song but I am also nervous. It was daunting to watch him masterfully create a beat by pushing so many buttons. He was able to turn two records into something different. The main theme I gathered today is that sampling fosters creativity.
May
2
Digital Scavenger Hunt
May 2, 2018 | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
1985 -Nelson George wrote a book Fresh Hip Hop don’t stop.
Quotes:
“Hip hop-a rhythmic term that echoes the rebellious post World War II jazz form bebop, has become the catchall description of this culture that has ripened outside the proscribed perimeters of mass media, and grown wild in Harlem and the South Bronx.”
“A true hip-hop spirit doesn’t need-or want-a designer label on his jeans.”
1984- “Hip-Hop to Freshness” in The Washington Post
Quotes:
“If a single word could epitomize the hip-hop movement, it would be “fresh.”
“There’s no formula to the fresh sound; that would almost be a contradiction in terms. Instead, what keeps the best of these performers fresh is their ability to find innovative ways of being themselves, thereby maintaining both novelty and a consistent identity.”
1988- “Latin Hip-Hop Elbows its Way to the Top” in The New York Times from ProQuest.
Quotes:
“A new generation of American pop is emerging from Hispanic New York. Variously called Latin hip-hop, be-bop and other imprecise tags…” The popularity of this genre “launch[ed] the careers of a number of singers and producer/songwriters—most of whom neither read music or play an instrument.”
“In a post-Madonna world of starlets without surnames, Latin performers could completely hide their ethnic origins to speed success in the predominantly white milieu of pop radio.”
When I typed in hip hop into Google Books Ngram Viewer, the graph was plateau from around 1800-1980, but then there was a steep incline after 1980. In all three sources, hip-hop is described as way to re-invent yourself. It allows people to be creative in expressing themselves. I never really thought about latin hip hop as form of the hip hop genre. Latin artists used “Latin hip hop” to redefine and differentiate themselves from the status quo in American pop music. The articles gave me sense that hip-hop describes music that was pushing the boundaries. Latin hip hop seems to go against the idea behind hip hop since artists felt that they had to hide who they were to achieve success. Hip hop was supposed to be a way to be unique and show who you are no matter the consequences.
Mar
19
Nationalism
March 19, 2018 | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
We discussed how the record store was saturated with the politics of race. There was a racial line set up by commerce and enforced by culture. I believe that fundamentally music is still delineated by race and what is appropriate for each race to listen to. With a racially charged culture right now, people are sensitive to what music genres they are listening to. Yet, we see more and more cultural mixing as different races come into the genres that are typical for African-Americans.
Commerce reinforced segregation while simultaneously breaking it down. The United States is famous for putting commerce ahead of the needs of individual private lives. Take for instance the literary works of Zora Neale Hurston and musical prowess of Marian Anderson and how they were able to write and perform for white audiences even when segregation had not even been addressed much less been dealt with in the United States.
American nationalism is thin and can be said to be fragile. Of course, the US nationalism is thin. The citizens of the US hide behind the bill of rights and commandments to degrade and demean immigrants of other cultures. Yet, when it is convenient we are the melting pot of opportunity that many should be grateful for. Travel bans and fixing the process in which families can help each other get visas is now a problem. Within these visa stipulations, we are focusing on the admittance of immigrants that have advanced degrees and can positively contribute to the US. These decisions are coming full circle again and goes back to the idea of commerce and how fragile our nationalism really is. We can be bought and at the end of the day if it gels well with the ideals of what Americans believe to be their self -constructed opinion of nationalism…it is accepted. Multiculturalism in the US can sometimes be seen as a farce and just a way for a nation to cover up that its fragile nationality is a means to justify inherently racist and biased tendencies.
The west is often the site of racial mixing because it was the frontier. People going to the frontier were people crossing boundaries and re-inventing themselves. The frontier was multi-cultural but was re-imagined as all white. What is American? I don’t believe that we know what it means to be an American anymore. It’s people existing in spaces afraid and unafraid to be their true selves. To be an American is to be regressive and denounce progressive ideas. The idea of multiculturalism is progressive and racial mixing is something that many feel they need to hide because it is seen as something to be ashamed of. We haven’t really progressed in our understanding of racial equality and the barriers that children or families may face in being multicultural. Look at how Prince Harry is going to marry a mixed race woman, Meghan Markle. At the same time, many are still resisting and degrading her as a human being because of her ancestry and her life choices. The color of her skin is not deemed worthy of a title or the prestige that comes with being married to nobility. Skin and race continues to drive transactional ideals. The frontier had to be reimagined as white because without that we couldn’t claim the success of the West. Credit is never given where it should be due. We continue to steal and profit from the ideas of immigrants and their multicultural heritage and claim and feign ignorance when whites are called to answer for their blatant cultural appropriation. The face of America is not what we portray. The face of America is a white man standing on a ground that was built by blood, sweat and tears of voluntary and involuntary immigrants. There are people crossing frontiers every day. Yet, we can never give the credit because ingenuity can only be novel to cis males and a heteronormative narrative.
Mar
8
New World Beats
March 8, 2018 | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
The European tradition tends to emphasize the “1” and the “3” beat whereas the Afro-New world traditions tend to emphasize the “2” and the “4.” Music of the new world is the hybridization of European and African tradition which resulted in the introduction of a displaced beat. The displaced beat has an emphasis on the “and” of 2. The “habanera” from the opera “Carmen” is an example of this. Habanera represents the music of Cuba whereas samba is the national music of Brazil. One can argue that samba has the same displaced beat. When talking about the feel of music, people often describe music as either being behind the beat or ahead of the beat. Samba is most often found to be behind the beat whereas Cuban music is way ahead of the beat. The U.S does not really have a national music like other countries. A great example of a song with the behind the beat feel is Al Green’s “Love and Happiness.” This song created a cool/ relaxed vibe. I truly enjoyed how he evoked a feeling of ease and comfort. Louis Armstrong’s “Dinah” was very musically playful. He completely abandons the lyrics by adding nonsense syllables. He seems to be really having fun with song which is always enjoyable for the audience. Any metallic band will exemplify music ahead of the beat. Their songs can almost seem very chaotic and aggressive. The snare is very pushing. Bluegrass is also a genre that pushes the beat. The example I heard in class had a very hyper/upbeat vibe. Some of the bluegrass songs I enjoyed, while others I did not care for. Swing music can be characterized as having a displaced beat as well. Blues and jazz are often built around the swing beat. By the same token, using the jazz swing beat helps set the pace for hip-hop. I preferred the New Orleans style cover of “Sweet child O’ Mine” over the original. The swing beat changed the song but it is still very translatable. I also learned that the swing beat is also embedded in Go-Go music originating from D.C. I remember Go-Go music being popular when I was in middle school and going into high school but it’s popularity doesn’t seem as prevalent anymore.