Human Nature and Technology

The Next Gonzo Journalism
Column by Chris Dahlen
Pitchfork Media

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But I think I’ve found the answer: We don’t have a new Bangs or Thompson yet because pop culture today is primarily a technology story. And we don’t know how to write about technology.

Oh sure, we cover tons of stories about technology. We write up every new thing from could-be-big trends– whatever happened to the podcast revolution, anyway?– to tiny but buzzworthy ones, like that “personalized” Jessica Simpson download they’re selling at Yahoo! Music. The problem is that every time we write about some new technology like podcasting, we go through the basic template– explain how it works, decide whether grandmothers will care about RSS feeds, and so forth– and we quote the same types of people: The early adopter, the industry analyst, the skeptic. And no matter what context the story falls into and how important the subject may seem, the overall tone is always the same: whatever it is, it’s “neat.”

In fact, all tech is “neat.” Maybe we can see some ill effects on the horizon– would federal endorsement of the destruction of embryos for stem cell research open the door to greater exploitation of humanity down the road? Can iPods damage your hearing?– but we only throw in the storm clouds for effect, to give the story some yang and make it more engaging. In the end, science is good, and progress is inevitable– so there’s no way that the technology we’re covering could be anything but good.

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The carpet’s intelligence is derived from a layer of silicone rubber with built-in electrodes that measure the changes in electrical resistance and current flow caused by someone walking across it. Testing has produced a nearly perfect record when determining ages between 20 and 60, and gender is identified with about 75 percent accuracy — eerie to say to the least. |link|

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Collaborating with machines
By Tom Jenkinson
AKA: Squarepusher

Article from the March 2004 edition of Flux magazine
Warp Records (full text)

The old preconceptions of machines (ie: drum machines, samplers, software) as inhibitive to “genuine” creativity/ “soulless” etc. are now quickly evaporating. The machine facilitates creativity, yes, but a specific kind of creativity that has undermined the idea of a composer who is master of and indifferent to his tools - the machine has begun to participate. Any die-hard instumentalists that still struggle to retain their notion of human sovereignty are exemplifying a peculiarly (western) human stupidity - resistance to the inevitable. What is also clear, though certainly undesirable by any retaining an anthropocentric view of composition is that this process proceeds regardless of any ideal point of human-machine collaboration (ie one where the human retains any degree of importance.) One might say that music is imploding in preparation for a time when there is no longer any need for it.

As is commonly percieved, the relationship between a human operator and a machine is such that the machine is a tool, an instrument of the composers desires. Implicit in this, and generally unquestioned until recently, is the sovereignty of the composer. What is now becoming clear is that the composer is as much a tool as the tool itself, or even a tool for the machine to manifest its desires. I do not mean this in the sense that machines are in possesion of a mind capable of subtly directing human behaviour, but in the sense that the attributes of the machine are just as prominent an influence in the resulting artefact as the user is; through his work, a human operator brings as much about the machine to light as he does about himself. However, this is not to say that prior to electronic mechanisation, composers were free and unfettered in their creations. As a verbal langauge facilitates and constricts our thoughts, the musical tradition, language and the factors of its realisation(ie instrumentation, limits of physical ability) were just as active participants in the compositional process as the “composer” was.

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Neal and I set up this website so you’ll have total access to all the supplimentary materials we presented in class. Feel free to register with this blog (”register” on the right) and post your further thoughts, comments, or other interesting things you found on the net. If there’s something we did in class that I haven’t posted, just ask.
Please don’t share this link outside the class, since most of these materials aren’t meant to be distributed. These are resources for class members only. If you download a video and share that with your friends, well, I can’t stop you. But don’t share the link, or I might be forced to take this site down.

I had so much fun designing and teaching this class that I’m sad it has to end. This was my first real teaching assignment, and I couldn’t have asked for better students. I hope I stay in contact with you all, and that you keep thinking about technology and human nature in the future. Mail me any time: eripsa at gmail.com

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