Digital music revolution

How did you discover your favorite music? If you were born in 1900 you might have heard it on the radio or at a local show but unless you were wealthy you probably didn't have any music to call your own. If you were born in 1950 you grew up during the British Invasion, vinyl records and rock n roll stations were the way to go as genres multiplied and diverged. If you were born in 1980 you probably had a walkman, albums were cheaper in casette form and you could share music with your friends as the RIAA cried bloody murder over mix tapes. If you were born in the 90's you probably saw the last of casettes as cd's took over and were immediately eclipsed by mp3 players. If you were born after 1996 your music collection is probably larger than those of all your ancestors combined.

Children born today may never know a world without Pandora or bittorrent, they will dive headfirst into the music of any generation and may never come up for air. Computer technology is revolutionizing the musical world and we're the lucky ones in the middle of it. We can now create virtual instruments that produce sounds we feel instead of merely hear and we can share our tastes with those across the globe. No longer are we limited by physical instruments, artists worldwide are experimenting with the sounds that will define our generation and shape music for decades to come.

General MIDI summed it up well, "[the synthesizer] is a machine designed solely for the purpose of creating any imaginable sound that the operator knows how to specify, and he must specify it in a kind of detail that has never been possible or necessary before." House, techno, dubstep, chill out, a vast array of genres have been springing up over the past two decades even as they themselves subdivide into finer and finer categories. I can imagine a world 20 years from now where music played solely with physical instruments is considered classical or even archaic. Those bands won't be outdated, they haven't been so far but just as performance was forever changed by the microphone so is production being changed by the computer.

Deeply involved in the electronic music scene are a number of experience enhancing drugs, notably MDMA. This is having a profound effect on music even if our society naively chooses to sweep it under the rug. While certainly not the only drug in music, molly changes the experience at a fundamental level which matches up very well with modern music. Rave music in particular (included in this but not mentioned specifically are all bass heavy genres of music) has a feel to it that is inseparable from its sound, a song can be melodically simple and astoundingly invigorating due to the heavy vibrations the listener feels. MDMA is known for enhancing the feel of music and, as this safer-than-alcohol alternative grows in popularity, the physical sensations of electronic music continue to intensify.

Music is raw emotion distilled into vibration, it has a power over the human spirit that has never been fully understood and always powerfully felt. As our collective ability to alter sounds expands faster than we can explore its effects, I expect we will find insurmountable joy becoming hopelessly lost in this electronic music revolution.

Environmentalism isn't about the environment

Many environmentalists are sending the wrong message about climate change. Protecting the environment for its own sake is wonderful but that won't motivate most people to change anything in their lifestyle. The most significant danger from our over consumption is that we may change the planet to the point where we can no longer live on it.

Is it really so hard to believe that we are changing the planet? There will be over seven billion of us before the decade is out most of whom are depleting the planet's reserves with no thought of exhausting them. We aren't hurting the earth, claiming otherwise is giving us more credit than we deserve. This planet has been around for billions of years, it has survived asteroids, comets, been encased in ice, and even survived a collision with another planet. There is nothing we humans can do that will in any real way damage this planet. However, collectively we are contributing to the most significant human achievement of all time, changing the chemistry of our atmosphere.

Global warming isn't as simple as the weather getting warmer; it may cause ice ages, droughts, snow storms, hurricanes, every form of extreme weather will be affected by a hotter climate. Extreme weather isn't the only threat, as usual many come from us. As sea levels rise and people begin to starve around the world war may break out over resources. When international tensions are stressed from mass migrations environmental concerns may fall by the wayside exacerbating the problem further. These avoidable disasters may cause the extinctions of untold numbers of species, including us.

We humans think we can survive anything but what happens when daily temperatures reach 150 degrees? Being the most intelligent species on the planet has allowed us to flourish but it may also be what causes our extinction.  It would seem silly to any onlooker if someone took bricks from their wall to build a fireplace, one brick may not topple the wall but eventually it will fall. Each incremental increase in greenhouse gases is another step towards our own demise yet collectively we refuse to change. We're in a hole and still digging.


The most urgent point in all of this, even if we stopped all greenhouse gas production right now incredible damage has been done and it may continue on it's own. We have to clean up our mess before the planet can return to normal, the good thing is the world already knows everything it needs to know to solve this problem.