20/20 HINDSIGHT
Mar 1, 2006 12:00 PM, Remix Editor, Kylee Swenson
So this train really doesn't stop, does it? I'm not referring to time and the stinging reality that we, and everyone we know, keep getting older every year. I'm referring to the fact that we'll never get to a point where we'll be content with our technology and just stop in our tracks. I know it's not a mind-blowing revelation, but the march of science really doesn't cease. We may find it outrageous that in 1899, the commissioner of the Office of Patents allegedly said, “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” But how could we have predicted where we'd be in 2006?
Fast-forward from the turn of 20th century to the late '70s: I pretty much missed out on eight-track tapes, but I still remember getting my first Fisher Price record player when I was four. I remember looking at my Swedish grandmother's 78-rpm records like they were artifacts. I also remember getting my first cassette tape and, just a few short years later, my first CD. When I started building my CD collection, I thought that was it. How could they possibly improve on this? That was until I scratched the hell out of one of my CDs, the toothpaste trick didn't resurrect it and I had to buy the CD again. And I wish I hadn't gotten so attached to CDs because they now occupy more space in my living room than my furniture does.
After witnessing many inventions over the years, I became jaded. Today, if I were to learn that I can store 120 GB of memory, all my credit-card information and 20,000 songs in a 24-carat-gold pinky ring imbedded with a microchip, I would be like, “Whateva!”
But every once in a while, it's interesting to stop and see how things progress. In this month's cover story on The Roots, the band reveals that it finally stopped using 2-inch tape in favor of an all-digital recording medium. That's almost a shock considering the group's penchant for '70s-style, tape-based production. In this case, convenience and efficiency won out over beloved old analog tape. So now, it's up to organic instruments and other analog gear to breathe life into the binary code.
Meanwhile, after 26 years together as bandmates, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith of Underworld are simply done with the current model of the music industry. Now that they can distribute their music to every remote village of the world with Internet access, who needs a label? They can sell their music digitally through their site, and they can certainly track their sales more instantly than they can get sales reports from a label.
Next there's Goldfrapp: The duo can hide out in a remote countryside cottage to record its album and get inspiration far from busy streets and on-the-clock studios, but Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory still end up sitting in room full of blinking-and-beeping technology. And just listen to the duo's album, Supernature. Goldrapp's remote retreat certainly didn't inspire any kind of organic endeavor. If this is nature, it's nature circa 2084 A.D.
Whenever we settle in our ways, people pass us by. Another one of those “D'oh!” quotes from yesteryear involves the big-wigs of Atari and Hewlett-Packard scoffing at a young Steve Jobs when he proposed they collaborate with him and Steve Wozniak on the first Apple computer. It's hard to stay open-minded as we get older. But no matter how much knowledge we gain, there's always someone ready to break the mold and show us that our current methods are outdated. To keep succeeding, we can never get too comfortable.
| Want to use this article? Click here for options! |  |
